


Burn

by cimorene



Series: Burn & Tennessee [2]
Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Angst, First Time, M/M, Pining, UST
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-03
Updated: 2009-12-03
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:14:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cimorene/pseuds/cimorene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elijah falls in love during filming and angsts silently for a very long time about it. Background pairing Viggo/Orlando.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: purple prose, melodramatic angst, crystal tears, unsafe and unrealistic sex, emotional partner betrayal (?). Written and published January 2001.

_You don't know how hearts burn  
For love that cannot live yet never dies  
Until you've faced each dawn with sleepless eyes  
You don't know what love is_

He feels Elijah coming before he can hear him or see him, like prickling on the back of his neck, before he has moved away from the window completely, before the intention has formed in his mind--before he stands with his hand on the door.

He is not surprised. He knew Elijah would follow him.

He hesitates for a moment in shadow with his hand on the door, looking at his feet and fighting something, he doesn't know what.

Then he opens it, and he half expects Elijah to call after him. Elijah is worried, and has been for days, but there are things you don't speak of. In their case, far too many of them. Sean swallows. If Elijah calls after him he will just say his name, just _"Sean,"_ and nothing else. All the other words that could come are more dangerous, from Elijah's point of view, until he understands why Sean is silent.

He doesn't know that _"Sean,"_ the way he says it, is one of the most dangerous things he could say.

Perhaps he does know--he doesn't say anything, just appears in the door on a little draft of warm air and closes it behind them. It is cold outside, cold and dark, and a brittle jagged ribbon of starlight is caught glimmering in the black of the road ahead of him. When Sean pushes his hands deep in his pockets, his fingers find a piece of paper that has probably been through the washing machine and he is gripped, through his numbness, with another shudder of grief--Christine checked all his pockets when she did the laundry, carefully, and rescued pens and twenty-dollar bills and important phone numbers. She made fun of him when he did the laundry and forgot that step--except when a blue pen left a bright ink stain on her favorite pair of khakis. Ten years after the incident, she still mentioned it when she was really angry.

Elijah has been walking a half-step behind him, making no noise but the noise of his feet on the ground, but now he catches Sean up and puts his hand on his arm to stop him. Sean pauses, turns his head to look at Elijah. He doesn't try to hide any of what he's feeling. He doesn't know entirely. Elijah opens his mouth, and then lets out a deep, shaky breath whose force carries him into Sean's arms, instead of speaking.

Sean's arms wrap slowly around Elijah's back, but when he has them around his friend he can't let go and suddenly he's clutching at the still-slim body with all the force of any of Lij's infamous death-grips. These have been a running joke since the first Thanksgiving after the end of filming, more than fifteen years ago. Sean has always laughed about it, but he could never find it funny in the first few moments of Elijah's body pressed against his, his face on Sean's shoulder, in his neck. Now Elijah has followed him outside, not knowing where they're going, ready to stand beside him in silence if that's what he wants and ask nothing--his very own Sam, perhaps.

Christine would not have followed him outside in the middle of the night.

He's not sure he would have wanted her to.

Sean dares to lean forward a little until the short softness of Lij's hair brushes his nose and his cheek and the biting clean smell of soap enfolds him, sparking in his temples and somewhere along the back of his neck. He sighs, unsteadily, and holds Elijah tighter, and for a long time, they don't move.

* * *

_The hours of the day  
I wait for the night  
I watch the stars cry out your name  
Where are you?_

Elijah had spent Thanksgiving with Sean every year for nearly as long as he could remember. It wasn't that he _didn't_ remember any Novembers before he was twenty so much as that remembering before Sean was different from remembering after him. When he had been just eighteen, fresh and green and wide-eyed, ready to start filming in New Zealand, he'd been a baby who'd felt a little nervous but overall, Elijah reflected, very grown up. He had not been very grown up, and when he'd seen Sean across that hotel lobby for the first time--he'd known him, and they'd fallen into each others arms as they would so many times later, a big, easy soft _brotherly_ hug--and something had happened, but he had not known. Elijah couldn't believe he hadn't known then.

When he had been eighteen, there had been the simple difference between recent memories and memories of his childhood. The difference was similar, now, but not quite the same; how can you remember something that happened to someone else? --Which was what Elijah had been, before filming had begun--before he had caught Sean's eye from a distance and seen the smile spread across his face.

He had never been uncomfortable or out-of-place in Sean's house, but he couldn't say he'd never been unhappy there. He didn't see Sean often enough by far--by the end of filming he'd gotten to the point that he had to see him every day, and for months he found himself turning around, looking for him, whenever he had a thought, a joke, one of those brief flashes of an urge that made him seek Sean's face before he quite knew why he'd looked up.

For years, he had walked a very narrow line with Sean, between holding back his affection, which he couldn't do, and being so rawly open with everything that he bled. He had known it was not the time. He had hugged Sean every year and snuggled into his embrace, breathing deeply, and imagined. He had lounged on his couch, carried his daughter on his shoulders and been a "horsey" for his son, watched football and movies with him, and sat outside at night with him, and not smoked, sometimes, because Sean didn't like it, but wouldn't say anything about it. They had talked as infrequently as Elijah could stand, which sometimes had stretched almost six months; there had been years when they'd only seen each other that once, at Thanksgiving.

He had slept in Sean's guest room, alone.

He had often wondered if Christine suspected anything, and he had sometimes thought she did and sometimes not. As long as Sean didn't know, and Elijah waited, it didn't matter.

And he waited for a long time.

Then there was Anna, his wife. A mistake he'd made in his late twenties, when his idealism, stretched too long and too thin, had started to fray and he'd made a desperate attempt to snatch it back and convince himself that he'd been wrong for his eight years of waiting, that he could still find love elsewhere, or _make_ it, if he'd just try hard enough.

It had lasted almost five years, far longer than it should have. He had gone to Sean's house for Thanksgiving without her the last two; she and Sean had never gotten along, not even as well as he did with Christine, who he couldn't help loving for her matter-of-fact sweetness, though they operated for all the years of their friendship on an unspoken wary truce.

He had let his marriage grow brittle and slowly fracture, and had watched it fall apart with little more feeling than a sense of relief. He had not said anything until Anna had--and he had let her end it, and had found that after so long it hurt after all, and he'd caused so much damage that at the time he thought they might never speak again.

It had taken Orli and Viggo nearly a month to patch him back together, a silent month on the beach in Florida. Elijah had never been able to be entirely happy around the two of them; he could bask in their nearness and the real affection they had for him, and the content that spilled over from the simple beauty of their love, but he could not stop the envy he felt.

As many times as Elijah had decided he couldn't wait anymore, he'd lost himself and found himself again, somewhere, alone as ever, with nothing to cling to but what he had always known and always been. He had waited because there was no alternative; he would wait still. He renewed that promise silently thousands of times, with tears leaking down his cheeks, alone in the snow or the pitiless weeping of a cold shower, the hearth at their cabin in New Zealand, the front porch of Sean's house, with Sean at his side.

He loved, and he would wait. It never stopped hurting, but he learned that he was never really alone when that determination burned in him, as though it had a life of its own.

* * *

_It's always best  
When speaking of two  
To begin with one alone_  
Sean had been thinking of Elijah when the phone had rung, and he'd been smiling a little, thinking of seeing his friend again. It'd been one of those days when you melt if you stand too close to the window, in the sun, no matter what your air conditioner is set at (and Christine usually insisted on setting it at 70 or 68 in the summer), so Sean had been feeling sort of tired and lazy. He and Elijah had been in the habit of seeing each other two or three times a year, but the last couple of years they'd only met at Thanksgiving. Elijah had said they should meet this summer somewhere, though, and they hadn't planned anything yet, but Sean had been comfortably content in his vague anticipation.

He'd caught the cordless from its cradle, almost whistling. "Hello?" He'd said, and wondered with that prickly feeling of half-premonition whether it could be Lij.

"Sean," had said a soft voice, in a British accent that hadn't faded in seven years of living more or less in the States.

"Orli?" Sean had exclaimed, pleasantly surprised.

"Yeah, it's me." His voice had been subdued, though there'd been a slight smile in it.

"Orli, how are you?"

A sigh. "I'm alright, and before you ask, so's Viggo. But--" _But._ More stabs of premonition like icy needles, like vicious little shocks.

"Lij?" He'd whispered.

"Yeah." _No._ Sean had felt his fingers going numb with panic and wondered if he was going to drop the phone, like in a slightly overdone TV-movie (Christine had been fond of those _Lifetime_ originals).

"What--" He'd choked.

"Oh, no," Orli had said, "He's--well--not okay. He's not injured." Sean had been so dizzy with blood returning to his head and his fingers that he'd almost not heard, "It's Anna." And that had been the most terrible moment of all, because the relief scalding through him had been tremendous, and he'd felt faintly pleased before the first rush of sympathy for Elijah, and before he'd even thought that Lij would be upset, he'd thought _I never liked her_ with a kind of horrifying satisfaction.

"Is she alright?" He'd made himself say, relaxing weakly on the counter.

"She left him," Orli had said rather quietly.

Seconds of blankness, when he couldn't even assimilate it. That was all. The end of the marriage. They'd always been wrong--_she'd_ always been wrong, selfish, because she hadn't really understood Elijah--

Then: _Oh, God. Lij..._ "Oh." Sean had had to clear his throat before he could continue, "I guess he's--"

Orli had sighed, "We're in Florida."

"What?"

"We came down here to meet him. This tiny little town on this little cape, with these beautiful beaches. But we thought you should know. And it seemed, after a while, like he wasn't going to call you. He said something about seeing you this summer?"

It had taken him a full several seconds to realize what Elijah must be feeling, but whatever had been between him and Anna, it didn't matter--it was the end of something, and Elijah was soft and vulnerable when and where it seemed like he wasn't. He'd often thought Anna didn't really know that. "Yeah, later this month."

Then had been a pause. "Listen, Sean."

"He's not coming." Sean's eyes had been closed. When had that happened, he'd wondered.

"I wasn't sure if he was going to call you, at least, not before whenever it was it was supposed to happen. But look, honestly--he hasn't called anyone. I mean, don't worry. We're taking care of him. But don't take it personally."

Christine had found him in the kitchen hours later and asked what was wrong, with, thank God, no idea of how long he'd spent in there hardly moving. He'd shaken his head, "Anna left Elijah," and she'd said a soft

"Oh" and come to give him a hug.

He'd patted her back slowly, closed his eyes and buried his face in her shoulder, lost and hardly feeling her embrace.

Orli and Viggo had had to call him--

Elijah had called them.

_"Don't take it personally,"_ Orli had said. Sean should have been the one saying that, on the beach, taking care of Lij if he needed taken care of.

Why?

He'd felt something beyond panic, a kind of yawning grief, that he'd failed and somewhere along the way stopped being Lij's best friend. And Thanksgiving--he would have to wait for Thanksgiving now, months more, but maybe it would be better, and he and Lij would be able to talk about it by then.

He'd known he should call Lij, but it had taken him several days to do it.

Viggo had answered Lij's cell phone, which he'd half expected anyway. "Hello."

"Hi, Viggo," he'd murmured.

There'd been a break as of drawn breath before Viggo had said, "Sean," sounding pleased. "You called back. I thought you would."

"You won the bet?"

Viggo had sounded very amused, but as though he were trying to hide it: "Sometimes I think he loses on purpose."

Sean had laughed unexpectedly, a bit of easing in the hollow cavity of his chest. "What are the stakes here?"

Viggo'd said, "Don't worry about it," and gone serious again: "I'll get him. Do you want me to tell him it's you?"

Sean had been surprised at first, but then he'd thought, humiliated, What if he doesn't want to talk to me? And then the same anguished _Why?_ Pride had declared he wouldn't talk to Elijah then, but it had been pushed aside. Lij _needed_ to talk to him, and he needed to talk to Lij. "Don't tell him," he'd said firmly, feeling fragile.

"Alright," Viggo had said, and he'd heard footsteps and "Elijah."

Then a break. Then a dull: "Hello?" that had taken his breath away though he'd expected it.

He'd been poised on the edge of greeting, awkwardly uncertain, and in the end what had come out was a simple_ "Lij."_

"Oh," before the name was even out of his mouth. "Sean. Hi."

It had hurt to hear Elijah so distant, but he'd been able to get hold of himself and remember all that was going on, and that Elijah probably didn't mean it. He could have no idea of what was running through Elijah's mind. "How are you?" He'd said softly.

Elijah had said, "Not too bad. It's--you know." Sean hadn't, but he'd been able to hear it in Lij's weariness.

"I'm sorry," he'd said, feeling helpless and somehow guilty, though of course that hadn't made sense.

Elijah had sighed and said, "I'm sorry too. It's just been--I don't know. But I should have called, I know that. I'm glad you did."

"If there's anything I can do," Sean had said.

Silence. "Just the sound of your voice," Lij had answered, and he hadn't been able to breathe with the shattering poignancy of that moment of relief.

* * *

_Whisper to the wind  
And say that love has sinned_

Elijah had never been sure that Orli or Viggo knew or suspected. Orli had always been deliberately mysterious, he thought, and he would say things that might mean one of any number of things, and you'd never know if he was joking. Viggo had always seemed pretty cool, especially after he'd seen them kissing in the hall, and Viggo had just met his eyes, and cupped Orli's face and pulled him into his room and shut the door. It was sort of shocking--Viggo had, until then, seemed like an older, hippie-ish person. It was then that Elijah had realized he was really kind of a bad-ass.

Then it had happened, six years after the end of filming: Viggo had had the Viggo-equivalent of a nervous breakdown, which meant he invited Sean and Elijah to his aunt's cabin for New Year's and adopted a stray cat, because he and Orli hadn't spoken for a long time, and he had apparently just then realized what he was missing. Elijah had not given them much thought after the end of filming, except to wonder if he was as obvious as they were, and hope not.

He'd seen Sean just a few months before, but the thought of seeing him again for New Year's had seized hold of him with such terrifying longing that he had mentioned on the phone feeling over-worked and as if he thought he should get away. Then he'd said, "Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't want to come, and Christine would be even more insanely selfless and wonderful than she already is to let you go"--which, of course, had guaranteed Sean's presence.

Elijah had not counted on the effect of being practically alone with Sean in the cabin, everything reminding him of filming in New Zealand, and then the alcohol he drank at New Year's--mixed drinks until he stopped counting, and a glass of champagne at midnight that he inhaled without tasting, as his lips still tingled from kissing Sean's cheek. He had been drunk enough, he knew, to have done much worse than just lie with his head in Sean's lap, and was lucky that the feel of Sean's fingers in his hair had been so mesmerizing.

In fact, he had done much worse.

It hadn't been like he was _trying_ to mess up, trying to have Sean guess, although he thought there must be an element of that in it. No, it had been that he was young and kind of selfish and he just couldn't _wait_, and he'd been getting more used to restraining himself all the time than he wanted to be.

Sean wouldn't have guessed no matter what, Elijah thought later, as long as he didn't want to.

The firelight had made Sean look like Sam again--the way it flickered over his face and caught in the little lines at the corners of his eyes, and made his lips shine when they were wet with alcohol. Elijah had never deceived himself that Sean was extremely good-looking, but by then he'd long stopped thinking about it at all. In the firelight Sean had looked carved out of light, red and gold and brown, with tiny flames reflected dancing in his eyes. Then there had been the soft careful sculpting of his face that you could only see when he smiled, and his mouth made its most perfect curve, and his cheeks became full, and you could see these dimples.

There had been the smell of him, so warm and real.

"I'm glad I came," Elijah had said once.

"I'm glad you talked me into it," Sean had said.

Elijah had looked up at him and done his best to look elaborately innocent, but he'd already been pretty far gone by then. He didn't remember completely clearly, but he thought Sean had said something or raised an eyebrow and suddenly Elijah had just burst out laughing, unable to stop it, and laughed himself breathless, until his sides hurt and he half-curled up in a protective ball and turned sideways, trying to catch his breath, with his head still lying on Sean's thigh and his nose in the wrinkles where his legs joined his body. It had been suggestive enough that he'd been both afraid to move and very reluctant to, and had spent some time thinking about blowjobs before Sean had tried to touch his hair (he realized later) and missed and gotten--the side of his face, the curve of his ear, the edge of his eyelashes--the corner of his open mouth, suddenly dry, his mind blank with nothing but a tearing clamor of want.

It had been a casually affectionate touch, and then Sean's fingers had been combing through Elijah's hair again as he'd chuckled, and Elijah had breathed again and closed his eyes.

And then, later, Sean had fallen asleep, stretched out on the couch in the warmth left by Elijah's body, lying on his back with one hand curled on his chest, his eyelids innocent of little dream-twitches, his lips just barely open, a tiny black gap between them. Viggo had gone somewhere and when Elijah had looked up, the aloneness of the room had pressed close around him, _years_ of it wrapping him up like stifling dusty blankets. When the fire had popped, it had been the most palpable presence in the room--besides the presence of a kiss Elijah was holding in with the back of his hand pressed to his mouth, though he didn't tear his eyes from Sean's sleeping face. Sean had been unmoving for so long, though, that he started to think, that maybe--

And then, he had been drunk.

He had braced himself very carefully, one hand on the cushion on the other side of Sean's head while he leaned clumsily forward, slowly, and left himself the luxury of open eyes as he erased the last remaining distance and felt the warm shape of Sean's lips against his at last.

It hadn't been the first kiss ever--there'd been another time when Sean had been asleep, and a time when a kiss on the cheek had missed. But it had felt like a first kiss.

It had been the New Year's kiss he had thought of, and would have given if he could: close-mouthed, nearly, but not chaste, a gentle yielding sweet pressure full of all the frustrated temptation he'd ever bottled up, trickling through him like blood. He had moved his lips the tiniest bit, near the last, and sucked gently on the undercurve of the upper lip, before he'd pulled back.

He had been able to imagine that Sean's lips, though they'd remained unresponsive, had clung to his when the kiss had ended.

Elijah had been nearly blind when he sat up and turned away, and it had taken some time for the movement of the fire to penetrate his thoughts. And he had heard Viggo clear his throat, and turned to see him in the door.

They hadn't said anything.

But Viggo had seen.

* * *

_You don't know how lips hurt  
Until you've kissed and had to pay the cost  
Until you've loved a love and you have lost_

He had fallen in love with Christine at first sight, long ago when he'd been very young and innocent, and it hadn't taken him long to convince her to marry him. She'd been so charming, quietly pretty, perhaps, but radiant with life. He'd been delighted with her mischievous smiles and lost when he saw her frown and bite her lip in concentration. He hadn't been able to get over the tenderness he felt for her when he thought she might be upset, or this sort of air of innocence about her though she was very practical and intelligent.

You couldn't believe she _wasn't_ innocent when you saw her smile.

Christine was a wonderful person, the kind who you smile just to be around, who makes everyone laugh and everyone like her without trying to.

She'd been adorable, and completely unaware of it. Sean had spent years trying to show her, and then to convince her. All she would ever admit was that she certainly could believe he thought so. She'd always thought _he_ was adorable, and she would say so, too, which was even better.

She'd invited Elijah to stay with them the first Thanksgiving after the filming was over, not just to make Sean happy, either, though he was sure that was part of it. No, Christine and Elijah really had always liked each other, though they hadn't seen too much of each other during filming, when Christine's hands had tended to be full of child. "What are you doing for Thanksgiving?" She'd asked Elijah at one of several farewell parties, coming up behind him and Sean, giving Lij a cup of spiked punch and a kiss on the cheek and tucking her hand through the crook of Sean's arm.

Sean had looked at her, totally surprised, and she'd just grinned at him.

Elijah had said, "Well,... eating Thanksgiving dinner with my Mom?"

She'd given Lij one of those mischievous little smiles and a dimple, and a wink that made Sean want to kiss her breathless, and she'd said, "Think we could talk you out of it?"

Lij had laughed, "Are you trying to?"

She hadn't said anything, so Sean had picked up her cue: "I _think_ she's trying to start one of those Family Holiday Traditions--having Thanksgiving at our house with guests. Are you feeling alright, dear?"

She'd said to Elijah, not looking at Sean, "You're more than welcome to come--we'd be delighted to have you. Especially Sean, despite his poor behavior."

"Sean doesn't want me to come," Lij had said. "I'll just have to monopolize _you,_ Christine. You'll talk to me, won't you?"

"Honey, you're too cute. Anyone would talk to you."

Sean had wrapped his arm around Christine's waist and tugged her closer against his side, and kissed the top of her head, mock-glaring at Lij. "Of _course_ I want you to come--but only if you don't monopolize my wife."

"Hey, don't be so selfish. You get her for the rest of the year!"

And Christine had laughed, and despite what they'd said, it had been Sean who had monopolized Elijah--or maybe it had been the other way around. But what Lij had said was true; he was with his family all year. He hardly ever saw Lij, so at Thanksgiving they hardly spent any time apart. Of course, there were other people there--the kids, Christine, other couples who'd come over to eat.

Sean remembered years by the Thanksgivings, though. "And Eileen and Herb got a divorce the year Lij spent an extra week before Thanksgiving." "We had _three_ pies that year we thought the heat was broken in the dining room, and everyone was wearing a sweater except Lij--he was wearing _two_ sweaters." "No, Chris, you were wearing that red dress the year we got the dog, because you were standing next to Lij and he was wearing that ugly black shirt he was complaining about, and that was the day he walked the dog for us in that shirt."

And then there had been the Thanksgiving after Lij's divorce, and the long, long summer when they hadn't seen each other after all. Sean hadn't happened to answer the door; he'd been in the backyard raking leaves and Lij had arrived a day and a half earlier than his custom, looking pale and ragged, as Sean discovered later.

The first he'd known Elijah was there had been the thin arms snaking around his ribs from behind under his arms, and he'd dropped the rake at once in shock, as if Elijah had stepped out of memory, conjured by his brooding about the divorce. "Lij!" he'd said, and tried to turn around, but Lij had been clinging to him too tightly.

Sean had looked over his shoulder and not been able to see anything but the dark top of Elijah's head, hair in unruly spikes of brown, his face tucked down against Sean's shoulder blade. The patio doors had been closed behind Elijah and the blinds were turned half-opaque; there was no one to witness Elijah's tears slowly wetting first the back and then the front of Sean's shirt, except the dog.

"Hey," he'd coaxed, "Come here--oh--" catching one of Elijah's hands in each of his and unwinding the arms, then turning and gathering him up close. Elijah had gone limp in his arms and come obediently, and fallen against Sean's chest, face vanishing again. The "oh" had been startled out of him, torn out, really, when he'd seen the frightening pale misery staring in Elijah's face, rimming his eyes with red. He'd looked small and fragile, and like a child, but so _old_ at the same time.

"I'm sorry," Elijah had whispered close to his ear as Sean had slowly rocked them back and forth, and for answer, Sean had just run a hand slowly down the shuddering length of his slim back. "I should've--" Elijah'd tried, and the words'd broken off in a spate of uneven, uncertain breath.

"No," Sean had said, "It's alright, I know."

"But I should have called, I should have come--something. I just--it was--"

"Sh," Sean had murmured, wishing he could say something magical to make Lij happy and make this uncomfortable twisting in his chest go away.

"But it wasn't you," Lij had whispered at last, rather subdued. "It wasn't your fault. I wanted to call you. I just couldn't think straight and I didn't know if you'd--you know. I just don't want to be such trouble, and I know you already--"

Oh, it had _hurt_, and Sean had had a hard time figuring out quite what he thought about that at first, let alone what to say to it. It was too late for apologies or regrets, far too late for anger, and he was long past hurt--he didn't know what to do, and he wasn't sure, somehow, that it was better knowing.

That something in his chest had unknotted, but it hadn't made the strange tight-trembly feeling go away--something rising in his throat that must stay back, a kind of panic that was in the wrong place, and he'd been confused, knowing no more than Lij, or less. "Oh," Sean had said, "Elijah..." and that had been all for awhile, because he hadn't known what else to say; just "I love you," maybe, but he hadn't said it.

He did love Elijah. He'd wondered, then, when it had become something he wouldn't say.

* * *

_Oh, God, why am I here  
If love isn't forever?_

Frodo had fallen in love with Sam before Elijah had fallen in love with Sean. There'd always been that _sense_ in the books. Well, the goddamned things revolved around how much the two of them loved each other, but they weren't necessarily _in_ love just from reading it--it was something you could read either way, and they'd walked the same fine line acting it that Tolkien had walked writing it.

They say that practice makes perfect, and Elijah had been a child star. He'd had a lot of practice acting. He wasn't sure if it was really the practice that was responsible. After all, there were people who couldn't act, and there were people who were very good, and there were people who were only good with a lot of preparation and a lot of _work_. Oh, acting was very hard _work_, and it was awfully emotionally draining, of course, but Elijah had been acting for as long as he could remember.

The basic mechanism of it--putting yourself _inside_ someone else, and becoming them--had long ago become as natural to him as breathing.

Peter's way of filming had been designed to put them very firmly into their characters, to make it stay with them. They'd created Middle Earth in New Zealand. They'd gone out in the middle of nowhere sometimes, just them, in costume, gotten really disgustingly grimy on top of their clothes and makeup, and spent so long around campfires and fields and trees and holes in the ground they might as well have been the real fellowship.

And he might have been Frodo and Sean might have been Sam, and for a lot of that time, they _were._

Elijah wasn't sure, but he thought Frodo must have fallen in love a little before the end of the first movie, after Lothlorien. Of course, they'd filmed everything out of order and the boat scene--Frodo and Sam's defining moment in a lot of ways--had been finished before a lot of the rest of the movie, but to the character, that didn't matter so much. It was when he was Frodo, in the boat, and Elijah saw Sam (/Sean) sinking under the water, and got ready to deliver his line: _"Sam!"_

Frodo was in love when he said it. The way his voice went high, stretched thin, and tore wickedly at his throat--Frodo's world narrowed so far in that instant that _all he saw_ was Sam vanishing under the water, and he forgot the Ring and everything else and would have gone back and given up anything to have stayed, to have had Sam safe in the boat with him or safe _anywhere._

Elijah had thought about it, but it had crystallized in the on-site rehearsals of that scene, in the first take. _My God,_ he'd thought, and he'd felt Frodo's panic, and his fingernails had dug into his hands. And when Sam had been up in the boat again, sopping streaming soaking wet and white light glinting in the water, his tousled hair, shining in the little drops trapped on his eyelashes--Frodo had never seen anything more beautiful.

He'd followed the script, but Elijah had often thought afterwards that that scene was playing very close to the edge of a kiss. He'd almost been able to feel it; when he'd watched the movie, he'd almost been able to see it.

Sean could become Sam, just as Elijah could become Frodo, and he became Sam very thoroughly, perfectly, inside and out. His wig became his hair--there was no Sean showing through the cracks. And Elijah could become Frodo. Coming _out_ of character was harder, but there was a definite difference. Sean wasn't Sam and Elijah wasn't Frodo. When Frodo'd fallen, Elijah had been doomed for a long time, but he hadn't fallen yet then.

Maybe it had been when he found out that Sean wrote poetry, and he'd asked to read it and Sean had looked uncertainly at him, as if to see if he was serious, before he'd said "yes"?

For a long time Elijah had not thought of that afternoon, but had pinned the moment a week or so after that. He'd been looking for Sean; he couldn't remember why, anymore, but he'd thought it had been to apologize for some random fuck-up in the filming. He'd gone to Sean's trailer as soon as he'd gotten out of his costume and makeup, thrown on the first sweater and pants that had come to hand, and he'd walked quickly through sparse trees, dead leaves crunching underfoot. It had been silent, and he'd knocked and heard something--muffled words he couldn't quite decipher--so he'd opened the door and stepped in.

Sean had stiffened and turned quickly and warily, but when he saw Elijah he'd relaxed and said softly, "Oh, hi."

Oh, but the _way_ he'd done it. It had been--like acting or breathing, as natural as Sam and Frodo, the way they were sweetly at home only with each other, no one else, and no matter where they were. But it _hadn't_ been Sam and Frodo, it had been _them_. Elijah had been, clearly, not just acceptable, easy to be with where others, for some reason, were not, but _welcomed_. From the way Sean had smiled alone--and he'd flashed on Sam and Frodo again.

"What's up?" Elijah had asked, concerned and forgetting whatever had been on his mind.

"Oh," Sean had said, "nothing," with a rueful smile.

"No, really," he'd insisted, moving closer.

Sean had smiled and sat down on the edge of his cot, and Elijah had come to sit by him, leaning back on hands braced behind him. "I don't know," he'd said, "Just--stress."

"Missing your family?" Elijah had said.

"Mm, that too, I guess," Sean had said, and dropped his eyes to his fingers twisted together in his lap. He'd sighed. "It's just--I haven't been getting enough sleep, and I'm really not looking forward to the next scene, and--my mother called to pick a fight today."

"Oh no," Elijah'd said sympathetically. He had had the occasional disagreement with _his_ mother, as good as she generally was, and despised them heartily. He'd already known Sean's was much worse. His eyes had widened, and he'd said, "So really sort of _general_ stress."

"It might be the sleep more than anything," Sean had admitted, and then he'd lifted his hand and before Elijah had known what was happening, had put a hand on the curve between Elijah's neck and shoulder. "Oh," he'd said at once with a wince, "awful," and started to carefully knead the muscles of Elijah's shoulders with both hands.

Elijah had been conscious that he ought to have protested. He'd come to apologize and discovered Sean depressed, and here he was, claiming Sean's attention for himself--even if he hadn't asked. But his shoulders'd been tense, and he'd had a shitty day too, and Sean's hands had been very warm. Also, he'd been noticing for the first time that his hands were big and yet gentle, deft and delicate of touch.

So, with an involuntary sigh, Elijah's head had fallen forward and his back had bent, and he'd leaned unconsciously towards Sean's magical touch. "Mmm," he'd said, and Sean had laughed.

And when Elijah had been melted into deep contentment, relaxed and so easy and rested he thought he should glow, he'd tipped over and put his head on Sean's shoulder, and Sean had laughed again and sighed, "Thanks for coming over."

As if he'd asked, or Elijah had done _him_ a favor. When he was stressed, and Elijah sat close next to him on his cot, the first thing he thought of was giving _Elijah_ a backrub? And then Elijah laughed and said, "I'll come a lot more often if this is what I get every time."

Sean had seemed surprised that he mentioned it. "It's no problem," he said.

Elijah had taken a slow deep breath and let himself grow even more contented, though he wouldn't have thought he could. He could have slept with his head on Sean's shoulder, but he'd made himself sit up and turn Sean around and rub Sean's shoulders, though he wasn't nearly as good at is as Sean was.

When his hands had cupped the muscles of Sean's shoulders, Sean had swayed back gratefully, and he'd bent easily under the firm pressure of Elijah's thumbs and gasped once or twice. "You're even better at getting backrubs than at getting them," Elijah had joked: Sean was easy to please, and he made it clear that he liked it. He'd also had a sort of lump in his throat as the awareness of what was happening to him crept closer, like sunlight on closed eyelids or the sweet tang in the back of your mouth before you take the first bite of dinner.

Sean had said, "We have a mutual admiration society."

Like Frodo and Sam, as both of them had thought, probably, but neither had said. "No, I admire you _more_," Elijah had joked, but he hadn't really been joking.

Sean's laughter that time had been incredulous, though, and he'd looked over his shoulder at Elijah with one eyebrow up and his mouth curled up on one side, with a dimple, but not the other, and the light coming through the blinds on the trailer's little window over the cot had reached out its long fingers greedily, clutching at him and missing, casting long narrow shadows on his face. "_You_ admire _me_ more, Lij?" He'd said with a self-deprecating tone, rocking Elijah to the core with surprise. "There's no comparison. You're much better."

Then his face had straightened mostly, pulling into a solemn look, but with those laugh lines still there, still traced with sun and dusky shadow. And Elijah hadn't been able to look away from his eyes--and that had been when it had happened, he thought. It had all just been too much. He'd been frozen, breathless, caught like a rabbit in the snake's glare and ready to go willingly to his doom.

And he had.

For a long time, Elijah had thought of that as the moment when he fell in love; but later, he thought perhaps that was just when he realized it, because when he tried to remember why he'd gone to Sean's trailer more exactly, he hadn't been able to come up with the reason, and he thought it might not have been very important.

Then there had been that morning when Elijah had asked to read his poetry--all the same realizations as the other day had been buried there, and if he'd really fallen then, it could explain the vagueness of the weeks in between and the full-fledged, determined quality of the feeling when it had finally hit him, caught him and swept him up dizzyingly and carried him along since then, never letting him go.

Sean had always been--something that happened to him beyond his power to express, and his thoughts became thick and clumsy when he tried to define it, or define him. It hadn't been the way the light shone on Sean's face or the way the shutters of his soul had folded back involuntarily when Sean touched his shoulders. It hadn't been the gentleness of Sean's fingers, or his simple selflessness in thinking of Elijah first, and not understanding what Elijah meant when he said so, because that made it sound like something had _made_ him love Sean, or as if it had had more to do with _him_, as if he'd fallen in love when he realized how good Sean could be, because he wanted it for himself--

He did want it; there's selfishness in love, but he didn't just want it for him. He wanted Sean for Sean, and nothing had _made_ him want, though he often felt helpless. It was one of the most marvelous paradoxes of love, that he'd done it himself, fallen, if not with his eyes open, with some part of himself very much aware of what he'd done. He'd never change it, for all the bruises it left him over the years.

It was all worth it for Sean's smiles and the sound of his voice.

Elijah had never been free of doubt, in one way. He'd questioned himself constantly, scoffed at himself, living his whole life frozen in the moment when the sun had reached over Sean's face from the window of his trailer and touched Elijah's face with a warm questing spread of revelation. He had never been able to change his mind, but he had been able, sometimes, to submerge himself so completely in chilling solitude that even Sean's "Lij!" couldn't pull him out.

Sean had called him in Florida the year Anna had left him--Viggo and Orli had called Sean, and he'd really known that they would, but he hadn't talked about it with them.

He hadn't been wrapping himself in fantasies of Sean, other wounds still too fresh to bear the price of waking to the distant glory of sunset on water, the soft wells of pity in Viggo's eyes. "Sean," he'd said numbly. "Hi." What else had there been for him, but trying to send his memories out with the tide every morning only to have them return to torment him every night?

Elijah had not been too weary to read Sean's voice--he'd known then, when Sean had hesitated before speaking and he'd felt a stab of regret for causing that pain, that he never would be. "How are you?"

He had wanted to reassure, but he'd been unable to summon the strength to protect Sean. "Not too bad," he'd said slowly, not really lying--it all depended what you wanted to compare it to, after all. He'd taken the phone with him to be alone, finding the door of the bathroom with a shaking hand, not looking, and ducking into it, leaving the light off. When he'd looked in the mirror a nightlight plugged into the outlet near the light switch had lit his face from beneath, drawing harsh lines of age. "It's..." he'd said, and words had failed him again. "You know."

The gentle rush of breath over the mouthpiece, Sean's soft sigh, had drawn a shiver--he'd almost been able to feel it on his face, his blood rushing and pounding with sudden painful, soul-draining arousal at the sound. His eyes had fallen shut and he'd turned away from the mirror. His flushed lips, white face, wide eyes--obscene. "I'm sorry," Sean had said, and his voice had been husky enough to hook talons in Elijah's scalp, drawing blood, scrabbling up and down his spine with shivers. Elijah had lost too many tears to cry more--he'd thought, until he felt pricking under his eyelids. One hand had fumbled for the support of a solid wall; he'd ended up leaning against the edge of the shower stall.

He'd covered his face with his hands, trapping hot breath to gust up along his damp cheeks and tickle his nose. To speak, he'd had to remove them. "I'm sorry too," he'd replied quietly, and his hands had hung in the air like broken-winged birds, fluttered--

\--Their touch on his skin warm but eerily inhuman and clinical, and he'd shivered again with loathing when he touched himself. "It's just been," he'd said, hardly knowing what words came, "It's been--I don't know. But--" And it had been so difficult to say. "I should have called," he'd made himself admit, "I know that. And I'm glad you did."

He'd turned in the shower stall, slumped with his back on the wall, keeping his eyes on his feet to avoid the black mirror. Elijah had picked up one hand to dash tears away from his eyes while the other ghosted down his chest. He'd felt as if he was watching from a distance as his stomach went hollow and empty under his fingers, tensing agonizingly, and his breath shortened. "If there's anything I can do...?" Sean had asked, and Elijah had dropped his head, too affected by the concern, the--tenderness--in the familiar voice. His hand had fumbled with his fly, but it closed over his erection through cotton when Sean said that.

He'd stifled the impulse to laugh, and said, "Just the sound of your voice." The words had formed themselves in his mind with bitterness, but they'd come out honest and unadorned, with nothing out of the ordinary to be read in them.

It had only taken seconds, when they'd hung up, for Elijah to be sitting in the shower, feet braced apart, one of his hands wrapped around the aching hardness between his legs. The phone had clattered slightly when he'd set it down next to him, skittering on the white linoleum. Oh, his imagination had always been a minefield, filled with bittersweet memories and half-buried hopes.

Elijah had not stopped picturing Sean when he jerked off when he'd been married.

Now he'd laughed a little at himself, cold and alone in the darkened bathroom of a beach house in the middle of summer. Orli and Viggo, for all he'd known, were wrapped in each other's arms that way they had as if they'd already melted together long ago, and standing apart was what was strange.

He'd closed his eyes and breathed deeply, and relaxed those mental walls that weakness had always toppled. He'd let himself imagine a forbidden future or an alternate past--and the click of the door and the whisper of air as Sean followed him in here. He'd conjured phantom touches to match the caress of his own hands. If Sean had found Elijah like this, he'd have fallen to his knees without a thought for anyone else, and whispered Elijah's name, gathered him into his arms. He'd have breathed Sean's scent and buried his face in his neck and his arms would have gone around Sean, and he'd have clutched him oh, so tightly, as though he'd never let go...

Until Sean would have said something, maybe "What is it?" or just a gentle, "Elijah."

Elijah's eyes would have opened, and of course, Sean would have been so close, as he'd been so often before. This time would have been different, of course--with the wan benediction of the nightlight sliding through his hair from behind and glazing the backs of his hands gold in the dark, Sean'd have hugged Elijah closer and dropped his head to kiss him.

In the dreams it had always been Sean who had kissed him.

It wouldn't have been like those sleeping kisses, or like that time they'd been so giddy Elijah had been able to turn sideways and catch what had been meant for his cheek full on his lips before he'd pulled back and turned away.

He'd have opened his mouth with a little shudder of longing and let go of everything to claim Sean, dancing tongues, seeking lips, his hands on the smooth muscled expanse of Sean's back under his shirt. They would have been in too much of a hurry to pause to take off their clothes; Sean would have sobbed something against Elijah's neck and pushed his own hand under the flap of cotton boxers where Elijah's was now. His fingers would have been slow, careful and gentle like he was with backrubs, but different, too, diffident. Sean sometimes lacked confidence, though it didn't show through too often--it made Elijah want to crush him in his arms till he couldn't breathe, kiss him until he couldn't think, couldn't doubt--couldn't but want.

Sean's hand would have wrapped around Elijah and he'd have moved it slowly, careful stroking, and his touch would have washed over Elijah and through him and taken all his too-deep, too-serious thought away. Elijah had known then that he'd been thinking too much, and for all his concentration, he was certain he hadn't once thought the right thing. Falling slowly asleep in the bottom of a well of darkness, choked and caressed by seductive icy fingers--but the phantom touch, the remembered husk of Sean's voice, burned it away.

Sean would have been patient--it was his way. Elijah had exhausted his store of patience. His head had fallen back, lips forced back around hoarse gasps as he'd slowly, slickly pumped himself with the images drifting around him like leaves in a windstorm--hot, wet--warm--eyes black in the dark, pinpricks of light reflected in them, endless brown in the golden sun--kiss--Sean's hands, his lips, a tear on his cheek that Elijah could reach up and catch in his hand, kiss away.

_Sean._ He'd come then, a sweaty, sticky mess, shredding him inside out like salt.

And it had ended as it had begun, with Elijah wrapped tightly around himself in the darkness, alone with his desire.

* * *

_Feel the sun on your face  
And tell me what you're thinking  
Catch the snow on your tongue  
And show me how it tastes_

There had been one of those moments that turns around, from peaceful introspection, and all the edges in the world become cutting-sharp and diamond-hard and twist themselves into your mind before you escape. Sean had watched with a kind of awe as it had worked its spell on him, the darkness, the flickering of the fire, the knowledge of Lij's, Dom's, Orli's, Billy's silent presences near him, though he couldn't see them. He'd stared at the fire and wondered why it wasn't bright enough to brand itself into his eyes--the smoke had been the lightest thing around, wisping into the air from the gusting spires of orange flame, curling around itself in a miasmous plume blotting the moon.

Sparks had flung themselves into the icy air, ever-higher, always winking out before Sean had had to tilt his chin up to see them, but never fearing their death as they went. A moment of vertigo and he'd been able to invert the world, see them falling from the dangling gauze of flame through the black water of night. Perhaps they settled somewhere in the sky, which would become a cradling silk bed, like the bottom of a fantasy ocean.

When the fire had been just dry white and gray wood in a circle of stones and Orli's or Lij's ever-present lighter, the world had not yet been pitch black, as his adjusted eyes had found the different shades of darkness, feathery pine needles and clawlike branches against a wash of night like water mixed with India ink.

Lij's hair, short and soft without the wig, brown cloaked in shadow to become one with the air around him. Now, in the light of the fire, and the cool of the New Zealand evening, Sean had known his nose to be pink with cold and his cheeks pink with the flush of flame. When he'd turned his head at last it had been to see the copper picked out in Lij's hair as he'd expected, because Lij's hair was not black at all, but a rich, dark brown laced with russet. And there had been an innocent smile--a laugh, really, at one of Orli's jokes, with his mouth open and the firelight flashing off his teeth. You hadn't been able to see his eyes because they'd fluttered closed in a moment abandoned to the kind of laughter that made him cover his face, if he was in public, as if embarrassed. Wracked with laughter, Sean's best friend, still so young and looking younger by far than his nineteen years. Sean hadn't been able to stop laughter from welling up in him either, at the sight, but it had been more the kind of laughter that came from smiling too much, and he hadn't heard the joke.

That night had been filled with the kinds of images that could come back to him years later, still as perfect as they'd been then, pregnant with the mystery of life, like when he'd stopped paying attention and Dom and Billy had thrown their arms around him and messed up his hair horribly, tumbled them to the ground, wrestling in the uneven red light and sitting up breathless with leaves in their hair, and Orli's and Lij's giggles.

He'd felt a kind of grief for the fire when they'd let it burn down to ashes and blackened logs in among the stones, and had to go to sleep. Lij had slung a careless arm around Sean's neck and pressed his cold cheek to Sean's, and said, reading his mind: "It was pretty."

Sean had laughed at himself, feeling silly, but the fire had been almost alive, consuming the logs so delicately in shifting transparent slides of amber and electric orange. He'd watched it rise and then die for hours, but when he closed his eyes its imprint had already faded.

Lij had laughed too, and let go of Sean. "It was _beautiful,"_ he'd corrected himself, and gone into their cramped tent without waiting for Sean's response. In the morning he'd woken before dawn had finished struggling out of its cocoon of hills and trees to more than breathe rosy life onto the edges of the sky. Orli had already been up when he'd risen, and just then he'd appeared with a bucket of water, startling Sean because he'd never known Orli to be awake so early, let alone up and doing useful things.

Embers had still glowed under the burnt logs, until Orli had tossed the bucket over them. Then steam had billowed in place of smoke with an angry hiss. When the steam had dissipated completely the logs had still been wet. The fire had looked desolate, slimed with silver water over its withered bones. And then the sun had threaded determined fingers through the tops of the trees and flung itself over the horizon, and long rays had sluiced down through pine needles, turning them from gray to green. They'd fallen one after the other onto the ground, spreading out in the dirt and freezing freckles of dust in their midst. The water on the logs had been lying in wait for the light, and they'd met with a still moment of pleased completion, silver catching fire with day and making the circle of ground glow amber and gold and pink again.

* * *

_You try to feel me  
But I'm so out of touch  
I won't be falling   
You won't have to pick me up_

"You're _not_ walking away from me, Elijah Wood," Anna had said fiercely, spinning him around at the door with her fingernails biting into his upper arm.

He'd met her eyes and wondered what had made her so much angrier about this than about any of a thousand other complaints. "I'm listening, then," he'd said, hating the sullen note in his voice.

Anna's lips had firmed and she'd stepped closer, though she'd loosened her grip. "This is _important_ to me," she'd said tightly. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you that. I thought you knew. I need you to--" she'd broken off and bit her lip.

Elijah, watching her, had forced his eyes to drop so she wouldn't see what he felt about her manipulation and given in with a little twist of his mouth, "I'm sorry too, Anna. I'll go." He'd sighed, and he hadn't had to act to make the sound. "I should listen more closely. Sometimes..."

"I know," she'd muttered, voice oddly half-pitched between familiar tones, but Elijah hadn't bothered to listen more closely. Her mouth on his had taken him by surprise with a soft assault of sweet breath and sweeter yielding, opening to invite his tongue to explore as she stepped closer still and pressed their bodies together, unbound breasts nestling against his chest under her nightgown.

This he could handle. Elijah didn't have to act in bed, as long as there was a spark between them to be breathed on. It would flare up and take hold of him. By then he'd lost his ability to forget everything else in it, and the narrow span of her waist in his hands, slippery under black satin, was too familiar to give him a thrill of demanding, spine-tingling discovery as it had used to. He could cup her ass and feel the soft curves, and follow the path of the dress slipping up her slim thighs as she lifted her legs around his hips, but he couldn't lose himself, any longer, in the excitement. Elijah had buried his face in her hair and let her breathless little cries fill his ear as his fingers had willingly pushed satin up to pool around her waist, tracing the warm moist cleft under lace panties.

Later he'd knelt between her thighs on the bed, one hand toying with her gently as his tongue had pushed into her. He'd been wrapped in the scent of her cum, overpoweringly feminine and like pure sex, but his head hadn't been spinning. Her thighs had clenched around his shoulders, but pleasure hadn't closed over his head. Elijah had been accustomed, by then, to sex that came and went and sort of washed through him, tightening his gut and making his cheeks hot and red without touching the part of him deep inside that ached for it, which had used to stir, at least, when he'd buried himself in Anna's wet warmth. She'd gasped again and made encouraging moans, arching off the bed, legs braced, then wrapped around him, pulling him closer as she'd sobbed. They'd fucked until Elijah was nearly breathless, and when he'd spent himself in her and rolled just to the side, he'd been completely exhausted, like nothing more than an Elijah-shaped smudge on Anna's no-longer-clean sheets.

Anna had stroked his hair as if her attention were elsewhere and said "Thank you," probably for the sex and for agreeing to go with her to the party.

"Mm," he'd said in the pillow, too tired for acting, too tired to pretend he was happy.

They'd gone to the party, and that night when she'd thought he was asleep Anna had kissed the top of his head and dampened his hair with tears, and whispered, "I tried," and then a minute later, "I'm too tired for this anymore."

And the next morning she'd told him she was leaving.

* * *

_A thousand years and a thousand more  
Would be long enough for love   
If you think of me  
You know that I still wait for you _

It had only been two years since Anna had left Lij in pieces, a ghost who smiled over Thanksgiving dinner and stuffed himself with Christine's turkey without regaining a flush to his round cheeks or a sparkle to his sad eyes.

Sean was restless and nervous after the dream, and got up in the middle of the night, rubbing his arms against the chill and struggling to push it away, to forget it again. It had been a dream of memory--very bad, because if he'd really had it before as it had tried to convince him, _that_\--he couldn't think it.

He found a robe on the bedpost and left the room barefooted, quietly. Christine, curled fetally in isolation on her side of the bed, didn't stir. The carpet muffled his steps but didn't do much to warm his feet. Sean stopped at the head of the stairs, where he'd found Elijah far too early in the morning the first day he'd woken up there, two years in the past. Elijah had been dressed, in socks and pants and a sweatshirt, with his hair wet. There had still been a damp, slightly sticky-looking pinkness to his cheeks and his neck. His hands had been white, clamped around the banister, his eyes not really fixed on the fireplace in the living room below. His back had stiffened at Sean's approach--so he'd felt it, but he hadn't turned, hadn't said anything until Sean had stepped to the rail next to him and slid a solemn, quizzical look at his face. Then Lij had said softly, "I'm sorry."

"You didn't wake me," Sean had said reassuringly, and hugged Elijah gently. He'd been resistant for a moment, then loosened his hold on the banister and let himself be pulled off-balance into Sean's shoulder. He hadn't relaxed, though.

"'M sorry anyway," Elijah had said.

"What? For not being able to sleep?" Sean had said, half-joking, and pulled back to see that Lij was smiling too.

"Wouldn't want to hurt your feelings, insult your hospitality."

"_I'm_ not insulted."

"Then I won't tell Christine if you won't," Lij had bargained, his smile widening almost to a grin. He'd been looking down into the living room again, though, at the dark fireplace and the brooding dimness draped over the corners of the couch.

"Deal," Sean had said, squeezing Lij's shoulder and only then realizing he still had his arm around him. Then he'd said, following Lij's gaze to the living room, "I think the couch missed you."

Lij had been smiling again. "Oh, really? Well, it's always good to feel needed."

"It gets pretty cold with no one to lie on it all day."

"Maybe," Lij had said, "you could work something out with one of the kids."

"They don't stay around very much anymore," Sean had replied cheerfully. "You're its best bet. Sure you don't want to stick around?"

"And be your couch warmer?" Lij had said dryly. "I'm flattered--and tempted, of course--but..."

Sean had said, wide-eyed and earnest, in the old accent, "Of course you know I'd never ask for my sake, Mr. Frodo. It's just for the poor couch."

Lij had burst out laughing. "For a little while, anyway, Sam," he'd said, grinning for a moment with Frodo's eyes, and led the way down the stairs. He'd settled on the couch as if it had been made for him while Sean had lit a fire, and they'd been sitting in the living room, Lij sipping coffee cradled in two hands nearly as pale and translucent as the porcelain, Sean sprawled in his armchair with the newspaper unread in his lap, when Christine had come down.

Sean walked slowly down the stairs as if he were still dreaming (though the dream had been of New Zealand, and the contrast was still faintly chilling). He stood to the side, taking half of each step as though making room for Elijah next to him. The brief space of hardwood floor was like ice on the soles of his feet. He walked quickly into the living room and stopped behind the couch, facing the fireplace. His hand dropped to caress the slightly worn corduroy--Christine was tired of it, but they kept it because Sean insisted and because every Thanksgiving, when he saw it, Lij's eyes lit up. Even that year, when they'd come in from their long greeting in the yard, he'd brightened somewhat to see it, and fallen into it rather the way he'd fallen into Sean's embrace as Frodo.

Christine had followed to the kitchen doorway and stood there looking at his closed eyes, frowning with concern. "Can I get you something?" She'd asked after a long while of reluctance to speak, and Sean'd looked up, almost surprised to see her there.

Lij had smiled bravely, but he hadn't opened his eyes. "Coffee?" He'd said hopefully, and she'd vanished without another sound. Sean had stood for much longer, behind the couch where he stood now, looking at Elijah until he'd thought his friend long since asleep.

Then the eyes had opened all at once, alert, brilliant cobalt. Then he'd smiled and reached up to catch Sean's hand where it rested on the back of the couch. "Thanks," he'd murmured, for what, Sean hadn't known. He'd closed his eyes again, and when Christine had come in with coffee he'd been really asleep with Sean's hand in his. Christine had sighed, and handed the coffee to Sean instead.

He could almost see Elijah there--his eyes closed, his mouth pale and pinched, his free hand tucked down along his side, one of his knees bent. So small and vulnerable, like a child lying on Sean's the couch, but with fine lines beside his eyes now. He'd been thirty-three when Anna'd left, thirty-four when the divorce had gone through--too young, but lying there he'd looked frighteningly old. Sean didn't sit.

When he went to the kitchen and stood looking out the sliding glass doors across the yard, twitching aside the blinds, the dog, sleeping curled in a tight furry ball on the welcome mat, woke with a little grumbling snort. It stood up, glanced at Sean, then pawed at the mat in an irritated manner before it turned around two and a half times and laid down again. He put his nose on the cold glass; his breath misted a circle around his chin. He turned around, blinds swaying behind him, and sat at the kitchen table, for lack of anything better to do. Sean didn't think he'd sleep more that night, not with the dream lurking, waiting for him. It might be awhile before he slept. He considered the coffeepot, wiggling his toes on the tile to keep them warm, and didn't get up yet.

When they'd gone to get his daughter, home from college, at the airport the next day, she'd seen _Elijah_ before she'd seen him and thrown herself at her "uncle" with a happy little gasp that was almost a squeal. She'd wrapped her arms around him and tucked her face down in the shoulder of his jacket. "Are you okay, Lij?" She'd asked softly,

And he'd said, petting her hair awkwardly, "Well, _now_ I am for sure."

Her brother, thirteen and predisposed to being scornful, had not made a face or a single noise.

Christine had gotten the next hug after Elijah, and only _then_ Sean, who'd pretended to have his feelings hurt. She'd laughed a little and hugged him tighter and called him "Daddy" in the same tone she'd used when she was five and they were filming _The Lord of the Rings_, if a somewhat older voice. When Sean had looked up over her head he'd seen Lij smiling at them with his hands in his pockets, maybe a little misty-eyed. Sean had winked and he'd looked away.

Sean was no more happy now, in the kitchen at 3:40 am, then he had been in the bedroom at three. He got up to make coffee and stood, resting his hands on the counter. The wind, outside, was loud enough that he could hear it pushing against the glass, stumbling through the trees, hissing at the window. Water gurgled with a sucking noise in the coffee pot and subsided back into the tiny bubbling whistles of a miniature radiator.

Whenever Lij had been able to wake before one of them, he'd made the coffee, and by two years ago Christine had long ago given up arguing with him about it. Sean had chastised him once, but he'd always known there were things you couldn't argue with Lij about. That year, Lij had made coffee every morning except that first day when Sean had had to pry him from the banister.

The two of them had been late to Thanksgiving dinner, because Lij had gotten up abruptly in the middle of a game of "Life" on the living room floor around noon and vanished. Sean's head had whipped up and he'd followed him with his eyes only, at first.

Minutes had passed and he hadn't returned. Sean had gone out the back door first, slipping through the door and sliding it shut behind him. The back yard had been empty, gray with rain and chill. He'd gone through the gate, walked all the way around the house, found Lij sitting on the curb next to the mailbox trying to light a cigarette with shaking hands. A flood of something nameless and frightening had crippled him, and he'd been choked with worry and a low insidious current of tenderness when he knelt and cupped his hands around Lij's to steady them.

"Thanks," Lij had said, releasing the word small and scared into the cold air on a puff of smoke. Sean had only sat beside him, their knees bumping, eyes squinted against the wind.

"Wanna get out of here?" Sean had asked gently after a little.

Lij had looked quickly at him, turning his head as if he were suspicious, his eyes full of a question Sean couldn't quite pick apart. So Sean had just nodded, and then Lij had nodded too, slowly.

Sean had opened the door again, stuck his head in and grabbed two jackets from the hooks in the entry, closed it gently, all the while with Elijah hovering, hands in his pockets, squinting inscrutably at the dull, grainy sky. They'd each put on one of the jackets, and started walking. "Maybe if I walk long enough," Elijah had said with dark humor, when they'd gone a few blocks. "That's something I haven't tried yet." He'd looked sideways at Sean, and added: "Thanks. I seem to say that a lot to you. I guess I'll probably never be able to stop."

The unfairness--because Sean had felt a swelling rebellion, swift and certain, at the words, but he hadn't known how to argue, so he'd just gripped Lij's arm to stop him in mid-step. They'd looked into each other's eyes searchingly for a minute, and then Sean had said, "No thank you's--for either of us. We're friends, and we're equal. And--just feel better," he'd added gruffly. _Look like you used to, Lij. Laugh at me._

Lij hadn't laughed at him, but after another instant of frozen contemplation, his eyes unmoving and nearly lifeless, his face'd been touched with a hint of warmth, and then he'd smiled. They'd walked on.

It hadn't been that Sean didn't know the time; he'd been wearing a watch. He'd have been willing to bet, though, that Lij didn't know the time, and he'd said nothing. It had started to rain again while they walked, a slow rain, nearly freezing-cold, that slicked the streets and dampened Lij's hair till it clung to his skull. That was why they'd finally turned around--Lij had started to shiver, ducked his head and raised his shoulders, but Sean had said, "Hey."

Lij had turned to look at him, raising dark brows over wide eyes like a mockery of the sky, which had been, that day, just their pale shadow. "Huh?"

"Let's go back now. If you want to freeze your ass off later when it's not so wet, I'll be happy to come with you, but we should really eat first." It had already been too late to make it back in time, by then. But what was more important?

Lij had smiled reluctantly and fallen into step with him.

By the time they'd made it back--the walk had been much shorter on the way out--they'd been soaked through, and Sean had been cold too. Lij had been shivering uncontrollably, by then, for nearly twenty minutes, a constant jangling cacophony of movement under Sean's arm wrapped around his shoulders. Every now and then he'd be wracked with another violent bout of shaking, ripping through the milder trembles, and Sean's throat would tighten in alarm.

They'd had to walk past the dining room door to creep up the stairs and change; Sean had caught Christine's eye and she'd given a short nod.

She'd been upset about their being late, but she'd tried to camouflage it, still gracious and polite as ever. Sean had thought at the time that she was mad at him and not Elijah, to whom she'd been just as solicitous as ever even after he completely warmed up, what had seemed like hours later.

Now, Sean wondered.

The coffee finished brewing and he took it into the living room, leaned back on the couch and pushed his cold feet under a cushion. The memories were creeping up on him, now, and he was getting lost. He couldn't resist the pull of twice-dreamed sensations for much longer, feelings with no basis in reality that ghosted over his skin raising goosebumps, collapsed his diaphragm, reached into his guts and twisted them into a hot, tangled mess.

Elijah.

He could hardly bear to think that the dream... explained things.

Hot, slippery, tight in his stomach. Sean wanted nothing more than to be alone, without even the thoughts. His head hurt, and he drank more coffee. It chased the cold, but the headache and the persistent burning of arousal remained. The feeling had become unfamiliar. It had been a long time since he and Christine had made love, longer since it'd consumed him as he remembered. He couldn't remember the last time she'd slept snuggled close against his side, and he couldn't recall whose fault it was.

It had taken a lot of work, but for some time Sean had been practicing not noticing it. The dream--the dream had broken down some illusions. Another sip of coffee, his head throbbing. Oh, God...

Young Elijah had been lying in Sean's arms in the dream, wrapped so tightly in them neither of them could move, with their legs tangled. He'd been drifting in a sea of pleasure and contentment, as if slowly waking up.

There had been kissing, Elijah's mouth open over his and his tongue thrusting deep in Sean's mouth. Sean had been gasping, whimpering, moaning. He'd writhed in the onslaught of touch, Lij's hands sliding smoothly up his ribs and behind his shoulders, curving over his hips and dipping down to touch him where all his body's aching need centered. Sean had felt like something stretched too thin, taut with wonder, tormented with the hot wet of Elijah's mouth. It stained him, bathing his throat, fastening over a nipple and painting a lazy path down his stomach. Ripples of blinding-white desire, all of Sean going dark and dissolving in a hoarse, crumbling cry, in an agony of desperate want and tender touch.

Then Elijah had been rising over him, covering Sean's mouth with cool fingers, and there'd been a low laugh as he lowered himself and took Sean into the heart of his heat. Thrusting helplessly, his mouth open, gasping or crying, no relief from an inferno of devouring completion. His eyes must have closed in the dream, because he could smell and taste and feel Elijah--God, he _must_ have dreamed it before, and who'd have guessed he could conjure the taste of Elijah's sex--but everything else had been a blur, his body shredding on seeking shivers, blossoming to a ripe fullness of panting and throbbing blood and the undulation of Elijah on him, around him, sweet and wickedly tight. Colors bleeding from the soles of his feet, suffusing him, burning red and indigo. His spine arching.

He'd woken up achingly hard, cheeks wet, breath horrifyingly uneven. And now, Sean knew: it was a New Zealand dream, he was certain, because the feel of it--it didn't feel new. He supposed he should be glad he'd forgotten it for so long.

It was when he remembered the dream, and had to put the cup down on the table so he didn't slosh scalding coffee over his hands, that he realized what it meant, this erotic fantasy coming back to him after so long and squeezing all his breath out--when Christine hadn't done that for--years?

It hadn't released him yet. He was hard again.

It meant it was over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics in order of appearance: "You Don't Know What Love Is" by Don Raye/Gene DePaul; "Onde Estas" by Nelly Furtado (trans. from Portuguese); "Inevitable"by Shakira (trans. from Spanish); "Willow Weep For Me" by Ann Ronell; "You Don't Know What Love Is" by Don Raye/Gene DePaul; "Leather" by Tori Amos; "Take My Hand" by Dido; "Let Me Be" performed by Britney Spears; "Estoy Aquí" by Shakira (trans. from Spanish)


	2. Catch Fire with Day

_Smashing in a cold room  
Cutting my hands up  
Every time I touch you_

Neither Viggo nor Orli called Elijah.

Sean did--before, Elijah thought, he called anyone else. "Hello?"

"Lij," he said hoarsely, and Elijah, who was at a shoot in Italy, put the little watering can down without looking, so it tipped off of the counter with a clatter and rolled across the floor.

"What's wrong?" He asked, hating the threat of tears that came with the fear.

"I--" Sean said, and stopped, and Elijah froze, hearing something in his voice. His skin crawled.

"Sean?" He whispered.

"She--Christine." After so long, all Elijah could think was _No._ "She's gone."

_ No._ "She's--?"

"It was over," he said tiredly, and began to cry.

_Damn._ Elijah couldn't think, couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Or maybe wouldn't think. _It was over._ Because--for so many years, he had waited. Had he been waiting for _this_\--for Sean to fall apart? And he could feel, buried in the grief, that spark of relief or joy, no matter how he hated it. And still, it _wasn't_ over. Even if Sean and Christine were over, that was all that was.

Elijah, who had never allowed himself to think of it, realized for the first time then what it all meant. Oh God. "Oh no," he whispered, and started crying too.

"I didn't realize what was happening for a long time," Sean said dully. "It had been a long time since we were really..._together_. I just--it's--"

"I know," Elijah said. Like the bottom's dropped out of your stomach. Like stepping off of a boat onto solid land. Like walking around with one eye closed, and you think you know where everything is but you keep bumping into it anyway.

Like everything you touch burns your hands with memory, and when you cry, the tears scald your cheeks.

"I'm sorry," Sean said, and the words dissolved. Elijah didn't bother to ask what he was sorry for. He probably didn't know.

Elijah, who had been ready for bed, wasn't tired at all; he pushed an unsteady hand through his hair. "You're at home?"

"...Yeah," Sean said cautiously.

"Don't leave. I'll be there."

"Lij." He sounded like he didn't know what to think about it, but Elijah could tell it wasn't because he didn't want him to come. It took him a minute to remember where Elijah was. He could tell, because when he realized, Sean said, "The shoot!"

"Nevermind," Elijah said gently, "Don't call Viggo and Orli. I want to--to make up for not calling you when I--" he had to pause for a breath to steady himself. "It's important." Even if seeing Sean would hurt like hell, even if it still wasn't time after sixteen years and it would be harder than ever to stop himself--he had to.

"I can't stop you," Sean said, and he was already breathing easier.

Take a breath. Let it out. Take another, and pick the watering can up off the floor, and what do you need to fly from Italy to America in the middle of the night? His CD player if he could find it, his toothbrush--it was winter, it would be cold there--a coat. He wouldn't stop for clothes. "Alright," Elijah said shortly, "I'm leaving now. I'll be there--as soon as I can."

They hung up and Elijah started looking frantically for his CD player, knocked the entire contents of a shelf onto the floor, sat down on the hotel floor sobbing. He couldn't do this, but he would.

He'd dreamed, just the night before, about Sean. Not one of the more erotic dreams, though God knew they were still frequent enough, and you'd think they'd slow down now that he wasn't twenty-fucking-years-old anymore, but an elderly thirty-five.

He'd been looking for Sean in Sean's house, and Sean's house had been empty and cold, colder than it had gotten in fifteen years of Thanksgivings. Elijah had finally realized the windows were open and gone around trying to close all the windows, and it had started snowing. Snow had fallen in the windows and drifted under the sills before he could close all them, and then he'd realize that with the windows and the doors closed Sean wouldn't be able to get back in, so he'd gone outside to look for Sean. The snow had nearly swallowed him, and he'd sunk into it as he walked even though it was level on top--like Sean's front yard sloped sharply downhill, even though it really didn't. The snow had practically closed over his head.

Could you drown in snow? Dream-Elijah hadn't. He'd thought he would, but Sean's hand had plunged down through the snow and pulled him out, gasping and sputtering. Sean had knelt on top of the snow, like an Elf who couldn't sink through it--and when he'd pulled Elijah out, Elijah had been dizzy and drunk with the knowledge that he could sit on it too, now, now that he understood--what he'd understood he didn't know, but it had been very important. And Sean had not wanted him to drown.

Sean had stared deeply into Elijah's eyes, his mouth open, no words coming out. Snow had filled the air around them, lighting in Sean's sandy hair and dusting across the shoulders of his shirt.

Then they'd moved--together, on one thought--and fallen into each other's arms, kissing the kind of kiss that made him wake up gasping with draining loss.

He hadn't realized that it was the boat scene until he'd been awake for some time.

 

* * *

_And every time I'm close to you  
There's too much I can't say  
And you just walk away_

Sean had been dazed since he'd realized. Every glimpse of Christine had been stored up, filled with nostalgia, though she was often cold to him. "Sean," she'd said one night, waiting for him in their bedroom when he came to bed, standing in her pajamas wrapped in a robe, hair streaked with gray. "Do you want to talk?"

It hadn't been that he didn't want to talk, it had been that there was almost nothing to talk about. He'd been at a loss for a moment, though he'd known what she meant. She was saying what she could about what their problem was. She was hesitant--though braver, God knew, than he. So she knew? And was she trying to--avert what had already happened. Sean had said honestly, "What is there to talk about?" And he'd known he should have said at least "About what?" or "Do you want to?", but he'd been too tired to say less than what he meant. Was there a streak of cruelty in him?

Was he really tired enough that he couldn't bear to interact with her? What had happened? He watched sadly from a distance, feeling that he was locked up in a protective shell somewhere, unreachable. When he'd said that it had been like he'd slapped her, and she'd hugged her arms around her stomach, though she hadn't flinched. There were lines beside her mouth, and when her face loosened in sleep he almost couldn't recognize her anymore. "I didn't think so," she'd said. "Listen, Sean. You can't do this anymore, obviously, and now I can't either. It's just not worth it. I'm sorry."

He had expected it, he had known it, and he had even, in an odd way, looked forward to it as the relief of suspense and the end of dread. All he'd been able to say had been "Oh," softly. They'd both just been so tired--

It had taken his breath away.

_Damn,_ but it had hurt, even as the relief washed over him, a flood of happy memories clustering around Christine's weary eyes still ringed with smudged mascara, and the foreknowledge of pain. "I'm sorry," he'd said. For everything.

She'd nodded, eyes filling with tears. "We'll go tomorrow."

"You--?" She had _planned_ this. Another knife buried deep waiting to bleed.

Christine had still been hugging herself, but when Sean had stepped forward hesitantly she hadn't moved away--God, that he should hesitate to touch her now. Maybe the last time. And for so long, he had taken it for granted, and for so long after that he'd lost it and not noticed it missing.

There'd been nothing between them in the embrace but regret.

He'd slept on the couch, and woken up early to walk the dog. When he'd come back she'd been in the kitchen. The click of the clock had measured off crisp seconds, one after the other, in which she wouldn't meet his eyes. The sound of the coffee maker had stirred the air between them alone, with nothing else. Sean had thought he didn't even breathe till she looked up, dared a smile through a blur of tears. His hand had opened and closed uselessly and she'd moved away, brushing past him in the door, before he could say anything. He'd stood staring at the glass of the sliding door with the dog whimpering at his feet for a long time.

Sean couldn't remember what had happened before he called Elijah very clearly. There had been getting the paper, walking the dog--how many times a day? And he'd definitely gotten two papers at once, at least once. He hadn't counted the days. He'd made a lot of coffee. He'd lain in bed for all of five seconds; then he'd stripped off the sheets and put them in he washer, and gone to the couch.

Sleep had not come, and he'd found the sheets soaking wet in the washer later. Unsure how long it had been, he'd put in more soap and washed them again. Had he eaten?

It seemed he'd done nothing but think, but his thoughts fluttered teasingly and slipped through his fingers. He couldn't hold them, and he stopped trying.

Elijah was coming, he thought, and the idea startled him out of a stupor: when?

_When?_

 

* * *

_Your breath on my face  
Your warm gentle kiss I taste  
The truth  
I taste the truth_

Elijah does not sleep because Sean doesn't. He slept this afternoon with his head in Sean's lap--ridiculous, he knows, and he was embarrassed because of it when he woke up. Like getting a backrub when you've come looking for Sean to apologize--biting your nails till they bleed in the Italian airport, chain-smoking, coming here in a taxi in the middle of the night--to sleep with your head in Sean's lap. Sean's hands were steady when they stroked his hair, but his touch was light and hesitant, easily startled away, and he'd lose himself again and again in a private reverie and go still.

He has been here for a week now, and for a lot of that time, they have not spoken.

They don't speak now; Elijah lies on the couch with his ankles crossed, his hands on his stomach. He hasn't said anything to Sean because he can't, but he hasn't stopped watching Sean since he got here, either. He figures it is his right.

Sean sits on the cold hearth. He lit a fire there for Elijah, once, the year Anna left him and a nightmare shoved him out of Sean's guest bed at an ungodly hour, before the birds were up. Then Elijah had been on the couch like this and he'd been on the hearth, like that, but not like that.

He is very tired now. Elijah worried at first that he was broken. Sean is lucid, though. His mind is too present, perhaps. If only he could find solace in sleep.

"If you want to talk," Elijah reminds him, after he has watched him for a long time. Sean may be avoiding his gaze. He looks down, so Elijah looks up at the ceiling to give him a reprieve.

Sean has shaken his head. In the middle of the night, Sean's living room is usually pitch-black, with the blinds drawn on the exterior window near the front door, but Sean has opened the blinds. The whole room is faintly gray, and in front of the window it's light-drenched, white fading silver. When Sean gets up and begins to pace, he steps into and out of that beam of light and the edges of shadows move on his cheeks and his neck. Elijah watches the shadows, but he watches Sean's eyes too, eyelashes lowered like crescent fans, casting deep shadows in the too-hollow wells of his eyes. The silver moonlight makes an eerily golden glow of Sean's dark hair that puts the yellow light of the nightlight in the kitchen to shame.

How many fantasies have started with Elijah and Sean alone in this room at this unreal hour?

He shies away from the thought. Sean paces more slowly and is finally drawn to the window, looking out across the yard.

When he decides to go a change comes over Sean that Elijah can feel from across the room, or perhaps he can just read it in the tilt of Sean's head. He stands up and stalks silently behind Sean to the door. He waits for Sean to leave, catches their two jackets from their hooks and closes the door behind them.

Night opens around them like a flower outside, fresh and unspoiled. The sky is so far above that Elijah feels they could fall off the world if they only let go, and keep falling till they were utterly destroyed by the piercing darts of stars.

He would go willingly if they went together.

He has waited too long, now, to linger a step behind Sean on a cold road at midnight. Breath puffs white in front of his face, vanishes when he steps through it and stops Sean with chilled fingers on his sleeve.

For some reason, the sight of his white fingers on the dark blue sleeve of Sean's coat is making him crazy, and he's breathless when he looks up into Sean's eyes, bottomless black in the night. There is no expression on Sean's face but what Sean feels, what he has felt all along. There are the worn little crow's feet beside his eyes, his mouth--the beautiful curve of his mouth with shadows caught in its velvet corners. And his eyes glisten, open and honest for Elijah, who doesn't know what he meant to say or remember that he stopped Sean to--

Oh God,

what was

No

_Too late._ He's in Sean's arms, and he thought he was shaking, but if he was, he isn't anymore. Elijah can't doubt anything or think anything. He nuzzles his head into the crook of Sean's neck and squeezes him hard enough to crack ribs if he were stronger, again, like he did when he first got here or harder. This hug is more than comfort, more than need, more than love, more than blessing. It just happened. Elijah is crying silently, and once again it is Sean who seems to be comforting him. He can only hope Sean draws strength from it too.

Sean's head has dipped. Elijah can feel lips in his hair, the brush of Sean's nose, breath-heat filtering through his hair, warm and damp. Elijah almost gasps with the electric charge this wakens in his till-then-dormant body. Now he's a live wire, humming to Sean's touch.

He could move and take a real kiss, before Sean, in this state, knew what had happened.

If he did that, though, it wouldn't mean as much as the fragile stillness of his arms around Sean and Sean's face in his hair. Elijah doesn't move, just sighs against Sean's neck, flexes his fingers in the fabric of the coat. Sean's arms tighten around him a little until it's become slightly difficult to breathe, then ease in an instant, but Elijah savors the feeling.

They can stay like this until the world lets them go, as far as he's concerned.

 

* * *

_If I take you tonight,  
Is it making my life a lie?_

Sean was sitting on the couch with his chin resting on the arm. He didn't know how long he'd been there, but the dog hadn't moved in all that time--it was inside, now that Christine was gone and he was lonely. A second knock sounded before it registered and he went to answer.

Of course he knew it would be Lij.

That didn't stop his reaction. There was that kind of clear hollow sun that hurts your eyes without making the sky particularly bright, all around. The blinds were closed in the living room, so when he opened the door Elijah was outlined in brilliant white, making it harder to see his face. He stepped into the hall and to the side, and kicked the door closed.

He didn't smile. His lips were just parted, damp and pink, and his eyelashes were wet. His nose was red with cold or with crying. Sean couldn't move; Elijah fell forward and hugged him, gathered him close in _his_ slender arms, clutching him tightly and murmuring words Sean didn't hear.

Elijah. It _hurt_ to touch him suddenly, even though he filled Sean's arms perfectly as they curled automatically around him, hugging him close. Dreamy pain-edged pleasure, tangling in Sean's thoughts so he had a headache already.

A hot hand, stinging like acid, had clenched around his throat when he'd seen Elijah looking at him uncertainly with his eyes full of sympathetic grief, and his body'd been drawn taut suddenly on invisible strings in a shock of realization.

He had never seen anything so deathly beautiful, couldn't imagine it--and it wasn't going away. Now his lips trembled. Was his body filling with something or draining of it? God!

An eternity of the familiar scent of Elijah filling him, taking up residence there, touching nerves all over Sean's skin so he nearly moaned with the perfection. His stomach--thin and liquid, stumbling inside him with dazed heat.

_How long had he been in love with Elijah?_

And he couldn't bear to let him go. Elijah was making no move to pull back, fortunately. How had he been stupid enough to call, to let him come? He was too weak. Sean thought, _I can't do this._

But he would.

What else was there to do?

Speak?

Hardly. He would survive.

 

* * *

_I won't leave  
I can't hide  
I cannot be_

The second day he was there, Elijah made a cake. For one whole day he'd trailed Sean around the house, though admittedly, they'd hardly moved. He'd planned to lure Sean into the kitchen or the living room so he could keep an eye on him, but no luring was required. When he got up and went into the kitchen to rifle through cookbooks, Sean followed him after only a few seconds.

"Do you _know_ how to make a cake?" Sean asked doubtfully, when he saw what Elijah was reading in the cookbook.

"More or less," Elijah shrugged. "I can cook. How hard can it be?"

This actually made Sean laugh, and he propped his head on one hand and watched bright-eyed as Elijah flipped the page. "You might be surprised. But then again, that could be entertaining..."

Elijah stuck out his tongue, and Sean laughed for a moment before a jagged shiver of memory slid slimy-cold across his face. Elijah could see it, his eyes closing tight, and an odd twitch in his cheek. Sean took a deep breath before he opened his eyes again, and Elijah couldn't tear his eyes away, back to the cookbook.

"Look, make a plain chocolate one," Sean said after a too-long silence, "it's not that hard."

"Right." Even though he'd known how to break eggs since he was a little kid, and scrambled them expertly, Elijah cracked one too hard on the edge of the mixing bowl. It broke entirely in half and crumpled in his hand. A shard of shell stabbed into the fleshy base of his thumb, and the viscous yellow-tinted egg white oozed between his fingers like cold blood. He shook it into the trash, making a face, and scrubbed the mess off the palm of his hand with soap and warm water.

His thumb still hurt. When he raised it to his mouth to suck cautiously, there was another little sting before the feeling quietened. It was awkward, the hand in his way with every move he made, measuring vanilla and milk, pouring the batter into a cake pan, scraping with a spatula with his fingers clasped strangely around it like it was a pencil. Elijah opened the oven to a wave of hot air and pulled his face back. He poked the cake in with one hand, squinting a little, and moved out of the way quickly so he could close the door again. Then he stood up, resting his hands on his hips. The dog glanced up from its spot, curled on the floor in front of the sink, and wagged its tail, always hopeful.

Elijah laughed and put the bowl in the sink. His spine pricked and he turned swiftly to find Sean's eyes on him, his mouth sober, his eyes level and deep. There was something about his face--Elijah thought he might throw up, the ground was slipping out from under him so fast. Behind him, his hand trembled and the under-edge of the counter bit into the pads of his fingers. If it left a red line that would be real. Flashes of pain interspersed with all the wrong parts of the past that he wished he hadn't stored up now, because they exploded with sharp-sweet little bursts all over him, burning-cold, upside-down-inside-out in his guts, squeezing and pulling. His mouth was dry, his eyes were wet--oh, he thought, what is this?

Sean starting, clumsily surprised, his hands on Elijah's back to steady him. Elijah didn't remember crossing the room; now he was in Sean's lap, face on his shoulder breathe deeply and breathe again--he smells like Sean--_it was wrong_ to want the stale smell of Sean's shirts now still when he was so alone, though his arms were so warm going around Elijah's back, slow and confused, halting. But they wrapped around him and neither of them spilled onto the floor. Elijah fit easily in Sean's lap. He always had. When they filmed _The Two Towers_ and _The Return of the King_, carrying him had never made Sean tired. Muffled sob on Sean's shoulder, for what he saw in Sean, hurting, when he couldn't read it and couldn't soothe it.

Why hadn't he realized that coming here would make him hurt just as much as Sean?

Elijah had always been unusually blind when it came to Sean. Now he hugged him too tight, and Sean didn't complain but hugged him back. "Stop doing that," he whispered.

"What--looking at you? Or breathing on your ear?"

No, Elijah thought, don't stop that. "Looking so pitiful."

Sean laughed shakily, "I'm sorry. You don't have to look at me."

He obviously didn't understand. Was there any way to explain something like that? So Elijah just said, "Um," because he'd meant to say "you're right" but it wouldn't come out. Then he said brightly, "Have you lost circulation in your legs yet?"

"I don't know." Voice warm with amusement, but if you listened, you could still hear all that terrible emptiness like snags in his throat. "Let's see."

Elijah breathed in and out.

"Elijah?"

Get up. Get _up_. He did, reluctantly, and gave Sean his hand.

"Hm--they still work," said Sean with an air of revelation.

"Guess I don't need to go on a diet," Elijah smiled. All their humor was thin, but it was a game they played to reassure each other.

Sean frowned at the thought. "Don't scare me like that, Lij."

He laughed, and walked into the living room. "I feel useful," he said, "let's light a fire."

They both sat on the couch, watching it, until the timer went off, and Elijah shot to his feet and went to check the cake. It looked done, and he didn't know where the toothpicks were, so he took it out of the oven.

Sheet cakes look much more impressive with icing on them. Without, it was just a swell of dark brown laced with the fine cracks it had made as it rose in the oven. "Do you have icing?" He wondered, looking critically at it with his head tilted.

"You can make it," said a voice right next to his ear, and Elijah's stomach froze and melted at once, and his blood was almost loud enough to hear--he hadn't felt Sean come up behind him.

Now he _had_ to wait, no question. Sean was heartbroken, still grieving, and confused, and besides, he wasn't offering anything.

No matter how it had felt, coming back to yourself on his lap with his arms rising around you with a little endearing pause as if he didn't quite know what to do with an armful of Elijah, his breath on your ear and the side of your face.

 

* * *

_Take these tears that you've cried  
And trust them to me _

He couldn't stop looking at Elijah, gorging himself on the sheer sensuous luxury of it. Pain and pleasure--Christine's face when they'd bought the house and she'd smiled and turned in a little circle in the guest room. Elijah's when he'd walked into it for the first time, flung himself on the bed and bounced emphatically a few times, that gorgeous smile and his mischievous baby-eyes. Memory and loss, the unfamiliar absence of her that still had him off-balance. Memory and regret, because standing in the door of the guest room watching Lij's sleeping face, he knew he'd fallen in love with him a long, long time ago.

Sean couldn't believe the elegant beauty of Elijah's long white throat in the darkness, his slender-fingered hands curled up, one over his head and one on his stomach. The blanket draped over him outlined the jut of a hip bone, the bend of his leg. Sean didn't have to see under the blanket, didn't have to have recent memory to draw on for his eyes to construct a map of Elijah's body. He could no more stop this need than he could have let himself love so long ago when it had first happened to him.

And now it was late. Lij was old; he was older, and his house was dark and cold. Better, wasn't it, to have met Christine, to have loved once, than to have yearned consciously for Lij for all these years?

He knew he would have.

If he could just cross the room and touch him. His mouth was open, the daring temptation of it, ripe and full, the soft curve of the lower lip. What would his skin feel like? Would it be hot under the blanket? His mouth.

Lij's hands, pale and fragile with their broken, bitten nails. The gentle curve of his spine. His hips would fit in Sean's hands, and when they slid down, his sweet ass would. And maybe if Sean touched the soft skin where his thighs met he'd whimper in his sleep, and he could wrap his hand around his flushed silken shaft and taste him.

All Sean could remember of his last dream was scoring Lij's back with his nails as he crushed him, coming hard buried deep inside him, Lij's mouth open as he screamed _"Sean!"_, and biting Lij's neck. He'd woken up alone on his side of the bed with an erection leaking with readiness. His legs had felt too weak to go to the bathroom so he'd pumped himself a few times, deliberately, and come shuddering and crying, thick and hot. He had washed the sheets in the middle of the night and changed them, but when he went in his room now he could still smell sex.

The worst part was the guilt.

He'd still been in love with Christine for nearly fifteen years after he met Lij, and in fairness he'd done nothing to hurt her that he could prevent. It had really been over with. But to know that he'd been waiting all that while was...

Waiting for the end of his marriage, so he could devote himself entirely to unrequited longing for his best friend?

Oh, God. Elijah. He _wanted_.

They'd had lunch the day that they'd met in a little coffee shop, and he'd thought Elijah was very pretty, and a charming kid. He'd always had a smile even bigger and brighter than his unbelievable eyes.

But he hadn't thought of Elijah as a kid for very long, and he couldn't remember anymore when it had stopped. Had it been when they'd accidentally walked in on Orli and Viggo kissing and Lij, with amazing presence of mind, had shoved him back through the door, raising one eyebrow? Outside he'd been smiling softly though, a silly look on his face that was too old for it.

Filming in New Zealand had lasted two years, and at least once there, Sean had dreamt the dream that had told him it was over, the dream of Lij's smell and the raging force of physical desire as he thrust repeatedly into the welcoming warmth of his friend's body. All his dreams seemed to be almost too hot, uncompromisingly erotic, fast wanton passionate sex that swiped his mind blank of everything but Lij. The waking fantasies he was starting to fail to repress now were slow, soft, endlessly tender in comparison.

That dream must have come after he'd fallen in love. The question was, _when_ in the two years had it been? He remembered waking up and smiling every day, and not having to look for Lij when he showed up on set because he knew where he was right away. He remembered looking at Lij first, whether he already knew where he was or not.

He didn't remember when it had started, but he kept trying.

Days passed when Elijah didn't leave his sight, except when one of them was in the bathroom. Nights passed that way too, and Sean got used to feeling his skin had been stripped away to leave raw flesh and nerve endings. The only night he slept without dreaming was when he and Lij fell asleep under the afghan from the couch, both of them lying on the floor in front of the fireplace with heat licking over them. He woke up once with Elijah's arms wrapped around him and closed his eyes against the burning to go back to sleep.

In the morning, he found them still tangled together, with Sean curled protectively around the slender frame of his best friend. His neck was damp, and it took him a moment for that to penetrate his pleasure-fogged mind. Then he realized the dampness was tears, and whispered, "What?"

Elijah shook his head, embarrassed. "It's nothing."

"Lij--"

"I'm so sorry, Sean. And there's nothing I can do."

_ Just the sound of your voice._ "You're doing fine."

 

* * *

_Will we burn in Heaven  
Like we do down here?_

"Thanks," Sean says again. Elijah has stopped replying to this. What should he say, "you're welcome"? But he smiles, because he can't help it. The surreality of this midnight walk has brought them to the eye of a storm of emotion, and other than being quiet, the feel of them is normal. The threads binding them together have eased. There is room to breathe. Sean seems so possessed and wise, but he gets anxious about little things like letting Elijah know that he hasn't forgotten he's there.

"Sean, I _wanted_ to," Elijah insists finally. There's the hum of a car approaching, and they step up into the grass of someone's yard. Headlights pool yellow on the black and white of the road. The car passes slowly, red light fanning behind it from brake lights as it turns a corner ahead.

Still they don't move. Wind darts playfully among the leaves of a sapling tree roped to the ground in a circle of short fence behind them, and Elijah's fingers are cold in his pockets. "Let's get out of the road." Sean looks at Elijah for approval when he says this, but Elijah is already moving. He meets the cool question of Sean's eyes with the same open look that has been on his face since they let go of each other in the road at the end of Sean's block.

The houses are a poor windbreak. They barely speak, but it's hardly silent in the midst of the wind's soft whistles, the occasional distant rush and beep of the busier streets. Turning away from the noise takes them through yard after yard, walking on the line between storm gutters and asphalt, white and black. "The shadows are shaped differently in the day," Sean says quietly. Trees cast uneven blotches on the street. Moon and stars silver it like a river, but they're not bright enough to make images sharp-edged. They soften the age in Sean's face, tease his mouth into a smile, perhaps.

"That one looks like a cloud," Elijah jokes.

"Storm cloud," Sean mutters, but he's smiling. Now they turn another corner, and they reach a dead end where three sides of curb cut off an eroded red mud embankment rising between houses facing each other across the street. There's a wash of rust-colored dirt and sand over the black, and the embankment is sprinkled with pale smooth river stones. They climb up it to stand on grass above the street, and walk up a more gradual slope towards a line of trees.

Sean lives in one of those neighborhoods that comes with its very own wilderness, complete with a stream. They can hear the stream when they've moved through enough dark trees to leave behind the sound of cars and the light of streetlamps entirely. They can't see it yet.

The sound of running water starts to make Elijah thirsty. "Should've just filmed Lothlorien here," he says, glancing up at a tangle of vines arching between two trees over the narrow path.

"Mm," says Sean, "it's an idea." He looks over his shoulder, meets Elijah's eyes, smiles, takes Elijah's breath away.

Goddammit.

Twigs crack underfoot, and bushes and weeds rustle. Elijah has to duck under branches more than once, and the path gets smaller as the wood gets denser. "Are you sure we can get through here?" he says nervously.

"Yeah--" Sean says, "--ew. Spider web. Watch out."

On the other side of a screen of moon-frosted shadow-green he stands, making a face. Elijah steps between the trailing ends of gossamer; a thin branch slaps against his cheek, and he can feel it forming an angry red line. Sean still hasn't gotten all the spider web out of his face.

"Shit," he groans.

Elijah laughs through his cheek's stinging and steps closer, raises his fingers. It's snagged on Sean's eyebrow, trailing on the edge of his cheek on a path Elijah's fingers trace as they slowly turn to fire. Then his nose--chin--and the last thread goes in the corner of his mouth--no wonder Sean was gagging! His lips part and Elijah catches the thread between two fingers, pulls it away, his fingertips still damp from Sean's mouth. "There," he says, and thinks he probably should have cleared his throat and definitely should look away from Sean.

But then _Sean's_ fingers are on _his_ cheek, where there's no spider web. They trace a line on his cheekbone, so it must be red by now where the branch cut.

"I'm okay," he says huskily, and Sean nods. "Sean?" He hardly has any voice left, only a whisper, because moonlight's grazing the back of its hand on Sean's face when his eyelashes dip to catch stars in them. Night has rooted him to the spot, shivering up and down his legs and his back with a slow release of something.

The forest sighs when he kisses Sean. He presses himself close, slides his cold hands around his waist under the edge of jacket and shirt. Sean's mouth opens at once, velvety, to admit his tongue, and he's gone. If he could get closer to Sean he would. Through clothing their bodies mold together, and when Sean pulls Elijah down on top of him on the ground, Night laughs throatily.

Elijah's lying between Sean's thighs, fumbling with the fastenings of their jackets, then their pants, and they push their shirts up with hasty hands. A shudder of denial washes through him when he feels the skin of Sean's belly, the searing press of his naked arousal. The silencing song of his mouth, sculpted lips and deep wet heat that makes Elijah forget all his fantasies, leaving him unable to compare. Sean moans into his mouth and grips Elijah's hips to pull him close, grinding them together, all impatience and dark demand.

Elijah answers, rocking against Sean, and he puts a hand between it to wrap it around both their cocks, increasing the friction as they rub together.

His jacket has ridden up in the back, exposing a crescent of flesh to the air in shocking contrast to the burn of Sean's lips on his neck. Elijah says, "Sean."

The lips slide down another inch, and Sean bites at the tender skin of his throat--

_ "Oh."_

If he could think, Elijah would think that they're going to thrust blindly against each other with his hand wrapped around them and come soon. But Sean's mouth has left Elijah's neck. It's wet and slick and the wind on it is rapidly making it cold. Sean's head has fallen back, his eyes closed, and his back arches, hips straining up against Elijah. Both of his hands slide down from Elijah's waist, under the waist of his pants. They're cold at the top of the cleft of his ass, and before he knows it the pants are being pulled open, shoved back, the cold air like a jittery caress, sweeping against him and arousing him even further. "Please," Sean sobs, "Let me--"

Elijah's throat seizes and his mind whites out with blank urgency, so he can't move or breathe

anything but kiss, and they struggle together, pushing his pants down, past his knees. "Yes," he hisses into Sean's mouth, nibbling on his bottom lip.

It's terribly awkward. He tries to kick the pants away, can't brace himself properly without pulling back from the kiss. "You--" Sean is breathing. They have it, pants and boxers somewhere among the crumbled remains of brown leaves, forgotten, Sean's pants slithered down his hips, his cock springing free, and Elijah bends down in time to his heartbeat without losing contact with Sean's fevered eyes.

The taste is not what he had imagined, but it is much, much realer, like the slice of blood welling in a cut compared to the welt on his cheek. He takes Sean deeply in his mouth all at once, laves the swollen length with a quick tongue and moves up quickly. Sean's eyes are closed again. Breath heaves his chest, tears his throat, escapes parted lips while his face is damp with sweat or tears. Elijah lies back on top of Sean, still incongruously wrapped in his jacket. He takes Sean's hand and guides it between his legs.

There's wonder in the gentle caress of the careful fingers, tracing a path to the puckered opening to Elijah's body, throbbing with anticipation.

Elijah stiffens at the first invasion, then abruptly subsides into wild arousal, soft relaxed yielding around the push and thrust of one, then two fingers. "Now," he begs, kissing nastily with his tongue deep in Sean's mouth.

Hands steady his hips and he puts his hands on the ground by Sean's sides, holding himself up as he carefully pushes backward. Gentle probing, and Sean bites his lip. Then he finds it and it's a swift plunge into insanity.

Tearing heat, pain that ebbs and flows around him and vanishes before he can catch hold of it. He's gasping with pleasure, Sean driving into him with powerful thrusts. The wind is chilled, the leaves gritty biting into his palms, dirt everywhere. Awkward kissing, far from perfect, sloppy but determined.

Elijah doesn't know what he begs for in the grip of that wet dream brought to life. If he could separate each sensation and slow each of them to store in memory, he would. It's not possible, though, to think of anything. If he remembers it will be in a similar confused maelstrom of _yes_ and cold/heat dark/wet grunting-panting-sobbing, coming long and almost painfully with the muscles of his thighs seizing tight. Sean's hands are resting there, rubbing carefully, and he pulls Elijah down into his arms, rolls them over, curling around him.

Fantasy runs lazy circles around him; the present bleeds into years of dreams. When he gets cold, Sean finds his pants and he puts them on again. They don't bother with his underwear. When he's wearing them he's still a little chilled, but Sean drags him back down on his chest and wraps him up again in warmth.

He wakes up at dawn with a stick digging into his back. He's dressed and Sean's pants are fastened again--when did that happen? They're a mess, littered with twigs, and Elijah knows his stomach and thighs are sticky under his clothes with dry-crusted come. Sean's arm is around him like it's been a thousand times before.

Elijah could almost imagine that nothing happened.

He waits for Sean to wake, to open his eyes and look straight up at the sky, expressionless until his lips firm.

They will pretend nothing happened, then. Elijah's too numb for pain.

 

* * *

_Darling, you don't know  
The power that you have_

Sean has thought several times that his dreams of sex with Elijah are exaggeration. Sean is forty-four. He doesn't have the kind of sex that twenty-nine-year-olds dream about. He has thought of making love, kissing the whole time, awake all night, bathing Lij's face with his tears. He has indulged himself with picturing a scene of confession, and somehow it will be alright, somehow Elijah will love him too.

Then, in the damned forest in the middle of the fucking night, Elijah touches his face--eyebrow, his cheekbone. His mouth. And that's the end. He can't control himself--it's like he's raped by the dream, his eyes closed and moonlight kissing him and Elijah all over, fast sex like blood and breath, like a hot rain of scalding color on parts of him that twist away from it even as they drink it, absorbing Elijah and unfolding hungry addictions.

When it's over, that's only the beginning. Sean's shivering with heat, cuddling Lij close for as long as he'll be allowed to. His lips ache for that kiss. He falls asleep restless, but he sleeps well with Elijah there. His body is happy--it doesn't know what he knows.

_Now,_ alone in the shower in the master suite, he puts his hands on the wall and lets the tears come. They mix with the water, hot, then warm, then cold. He is in the shower for a long time. Sean rubs himself all over with a towel that can't erase the marks of Lij's lips. When he looks in the mirror, and runs his hands over his chest, Sean is almost surprised that he can't see some visible sign everywhere they touched. He's pretty sure he can still remember. His fingers card through the hair on his chest, rest on one nipple, there, that spot on his collar bone, his ribs, the side of his neck.

_ Elijah, what are you thinking?_ Does Elijah regret? Sean can't imagine that he does. He would have followed Sean anywhere last night, as long as he could sense this pain, however little he understood it. Elijah would do anything to comfort him, and grudge none of it. He'd have suffered far more than that red slash across his beautiful cheekbone, the strained trembling in his thighs, and whatever he finds in the memory.

If it's the price for peace of mind, Elijah will pay it. But--what has it bought them? Sean doesn't know how he'll speak when he comes out of the bedroom, so he doesn't. He crawls into bed naked, wraps himself in a blanket and presses his face into the pillow. He can remember Lij's taste, his smell, and it's almost stronger than the scent of his own hair, shampoo, and laundry detergent.

He will have to face Elijah.

When he wakes up. God. _Lij._ Can you heal me of this?

 

* * *

_The hours of the day  
I close my eyes_

Elijah didn't realize there was anything _more_ painful. He didn't know that something you wanted could hurt so fucking much, a pain that mocks him because he still wouldn't give it back.

He's surprisingly good at pretending nothing happened. Okay, maybe it shouldn't be surprising. But Sean knows him inside out, and he's worn out, beyond acting. He'd never be able to fool Sean if they weren't in a conspiracy to forget: they both pretend, and they both pretend not to notice the other's slip-ups.

And meanwhile, Elijah's not ready to leave. He doesn't know how Sean will get better _now_ when it's hard to imagine his presence is a good thing anymore, but he won't leave when he's not confident Sean is okay. So he's not going anywhere, but time is trickling through his fingers just the same. He walks into the living room the next day and Sean is reading, but he looks up and meets Elijah's eyes at once.

Elijah thinks, later, that this must have been an accident. At the time he thinks nothing at all, just loses himself in Sean's gaze. His eyes are so--inexpressible. _Brown_ is not the word. Color isn't even what makes them look the way they do--if beauty had a color, though, that would be it. Exquisite, soft-bright-brown-black, they swallow the light and shadow and Elijah's turbulent thoughts with equal ease.

When he can wrench himself away Elijah turns and leaves again, not sure where he's going or what he was doing there in the first place. Part of him wants to tell Sean to stop tormenting him, but Sean can't help being Sean, and he's the one who won't leave. Besides, Sean wouldn't know what he meant. He buries his face in his hands, propping his elbows on the kitchen table. Then he makes coffee, and he takes the first cup to Sean.

The book is nowhere in sight, but Sean's in the same chair. He must have been watching Elijah, but when Elijah looks at him he looks down quickly, and smiles, taking the coffee carefully. "Thanks."

"No problem." Elijah settles on the couch and thinks that he's small enough for both of them to sit in that chair, though not without him being mostly on top of Sean.

He wakes up on the couch the next morning, and the first thing he does is look at the chair. Sure enough, Sean is still there, curled a little, turned to his side, head slumped sideways. It doesn't look comfortable. He will have a crick in his neck. Elijah makes another pot of coffee, returns to the living room while it's brewing.

When he touches the side of Sean's neck, pressing gently with three fingertips, Sean winces and starts. Elijah drops his whole hand to the curve at the back of his neck, a vertebra fitting in the palm of his hand. It's tight and stiff, strained. He moves his hand a little, then lifts the other hand and begins a gentle massage in earnest.

This is a very bad idea.

"Mmm," is the first thing Sean says when he wakes up. Finally he tips his head back and looks up at Elijah. _Keep your eyes closed,_ Elijah wants to tell him, _Don't you know what you do to me?_ He drops his hands quickly so Sean won't sense them clenching into fists.

"Coffee," he squeaks with difficulty and tries not to bolt into the kitchen.

Every time he looks at Sean's mouth--which is much more often than it would be if he had an ounce of self-control--Elijah remembers the kiss. When his gaze lingers on Sean's fingers he remembers them digging into his waist as Elijah's thighs closed around Sean's hips. Sean's simply graceful, and it emerges at odd moments. When he arches his back and stretches, when he reaches across the table for the salt, when he sinks to a heap on the top step of the stairs and buries his face in his hands--Elijah sees the muscles in his stomach, his back arching, mouth open and gasping.

He supposes he should be glad Sean isn't going to kick him out, apparently.

They go to the grocery store together and Elijah walks behind Sean with his hands in his pockets, pinching his lips together to keep from speaking: _Won't you look at me?_

"What do you want?" Sean asks, scanning a shelf of salad dressing.

_You,_ Elijah almost says.

"I can cook spaghetti," Elijah offers hopefully, when they're in the pasta.

Sean slides an amused look at him. "We have spaghetti."

Oh. _Smile at me again._ "What are we getting, then?"

At the checkout, the checker in her turquoise smock tells him to have a good day, and Sean has to nudge him because he hasn't heard. "Are you alright?" She asks.

_No,_ he thinks, but he summons a smile. "Yeah. Sorry."

A shy smile, "That's okay," and that's when it occurs to him they might have been recognized. Or he might have been.

It's started raining while they were inside, and you can hear it perfectly well on the roof, but it's not the kind of sound you notice. It's still slow, the pavement covered with small black circles. Elijah can hear individual little noises as it falls to the ground and _pings_ against their plastic shopping bags. He stops beside Sean's car and tilts his chin up high, closing his eyes, for the kiss of cold water. It slips down his cheeks so slowly that by the time it reaches his temple and catches in his hair, it's tear-warm.

 

* * *

_As I watch the drops of rain  
Weave their weary paths and die  
I know that I am like the rain  
There but for the grace of you go I_

"It's a little cold for catching rain in your mouth," says Sean.

Elijah finishes running his fingers through his wet hair. It stands on end as it always has, much the way it would when he was twenty. "I didn't catch it in my _mouth_," Elijah protests.

"You caught it on your face. Including your mouth."

Lij gives him a playful glower. "It was a little cold."

Sean laughs, turns on the windshield wipers and backs out of the parking space. "So. Was it everything you'd expected?" He's grinning, but he curses himself when the words are out for saying them.

Elijah says carefully, "I think so. Maybe more."

_ Now_ what--let them still be talking about the rain. "There's a towel in the back seat," says Sean, his mind whirling.

They weren't supposed to talk about this.

And if they did, Elijah wasn't going to say that.

He doesn't want Elijah to protect him. He knows he can't stop him, but he doesn't need protected--and where was he when Lij fell apart two years ago?

"Thanks," says Lij from the folds of the towel, drying his face. His hair is even more messed up when he tosses it back over his shoulder.

Sean is surprised to feel disappointment when he doesn't say anything else.

Water slicks the windshield between creaks of the wipers and sifts down around them, glittering silver. It's grown faster since they left the store, and by the time they reach Sean's house it is a lot closer to pouring. The yard will be one big soupy mess, with spongy grass that sucks at the bottoms of your shoes.

Sean slides out of the car and walks around it. He takes one of the bags of groceries from Lij, takes a step back, and looks up. He tips his head back all the way until all he sees is dizzy blue fringed with green treetops. The car door slams: "wait," he tells Lij, holding out one hand, gesturing him to stop. What is it about the rain on your face that made Lij--?

The drops give him vertigo racing towards him and Sean closes his eyes, and then they feel like tears, cold tears. They smooth out, though, and slip down the sides of his face, tickling through the hair on his cheeks.

Sean looks up. Elijah is watching him and--

Crying, his lips trembling, eyes brimming, unmistakable tears mixing with the cold weeping of the sky on his face. Sean gasps. "Lij?"

He shakes his head. Vertigo, as Sean's moving forward again but doesn't register taking any steps until he's holding one arm in each of his hands, getting wetter and wetter.

"What is it? Are you--"

Elijah shakes his head again, harder. "I can't," he chokes, turning his face away, looking down miserably. "I didn't mean to. I can't help it--I--if you want me to leave..."

Sean's eyes widen. Not in the broken babbling, but in the tone, the movement of his mouth, the eyes that turn away, lashes dropping, when Sean's finger reaches for his chin... his breath catches. "Do you--?" He starts to say urgently, finding the chin again with gentle fingertips and turning the pale face. Elijah's eyes lift to meet his, glazed over with anguish, and something flashes between them in the instant before he closes them again with a little sob.

The answer.

"Elijah," Sean breathes, and he doesn't move until Sean's lips find the curve of his cheek, under his eye, above his cheekbone, where the skin is translucently fragile. The ghost of a kiss. "Why," he whispers, "Didn't you tell me?"

Only then does Elijah look up, stricken and fearful, to confirm the knowledge in   
Sean's voice. "I--" Before he can flinch away, Sean's hand tightens inexorably on his arm, draws him forward off-balance.

Their lips meet with rain running between, and it's easy to pull Lij closer till body heat flies back and forth and multiplies, keeping back the cold clamminess of the water on their necks.

If they both cry, it will be easy to deny with the whole world swimming wet, silver on their faces and in their eyelashes. The sky bends down over them, periwinkle-gray that can't compete with Elijah's eyes and doesn't try, and they forget the groceries as they rediscover the astonishing perfect match of their mouths, the sweetness bearing them up and dragging them under. It's easy to lose themselves in this kiss, and not so easy to forget days of silent pain, but they can keep trying.

If they both drown--in the rain, making the air and the ground and everything waterlogged and heavy, or in the sheer rain-wet gray-sky cool-hot-wet gasping-smiling solemnity of the moment--it won't matter. Elijah bends closer, pliant and fluid, and their wet shirts, pressed between their torsos, can't stay cold. He might be bruising Lij's arm, Sean thinks vaguely, because he's squeezing it very hard. How can he help it when Lij makes those little noises in his throat?

 

* * *

_Say my name and I can't  
Fight it anymore_

There had been moments in the beginning of it all when he'd sort of liked the idea. To nineteen-year-old Elijah it had all seemed unbearably romantic, even though of course he'd never been _happy_ with it.

Even now everything is colored with memories of New Zealand. Elijah can still remember when he first recognized the feeling that he couldn't live without Sean. He hadn't said it, of course (not seriously, and not then). He'd known the idea was silly. He'd known that filming would end eventually (though a year had seemed like a long time, then, in an abstract way, even though they'd all said it was short).

It hadn't taken him long at all to grow dependent on Sean, though, and he'd realized that he was in love with a feeling of incredible awe without quite realizing, at first, what he was in for. He'd been sitting in his trailer after a hard day, all dressed again and just too tired to get up, too tired to _move_. Then there had been a knock, because he and Sean had planned to go back to the hotel together. Elijah'd hauled himself up with a groan, all of a sudden, strength coming from nowhere. From the thought of Sean's face, he guesses. He'd opened the door and stood there looking down at a sunlit smile on Sean's face. "Think you can make it?" Sean had joked, gently. "Or do I have to carry you?"

Elijah'd laughed. "As attractive as the offer is, I'll manage." He'd been tired enough, but he wouldn't've trusted himself, even if Sean had been serious.

And then he'd slipped on the step, just barely, and stumbled. Before he could catch himself on the wall of the trailer, Sean had been there. "Well, I _was_ joking," he'd said, "But if you want to take me up on it..."

_ My God,_ Elijah had thought, leaning on Sean's arm. _What am I going to do when I'm not with him anymore?_ He'd realized that he literally would rather be where Sean was pretty much all the time. It had not seemed really _bad_, then. That had come later, when the thought of leaving had become much more real. Then it had really started to suck.

The waiting, though, had sucked more. Fifteen years of it.

Elijah has no intention of sleeping that night. "Never again," he promises himself, watching lamplight and his fingers play on Sean's spine, and Sean can't, _can't_ know what he's talking about, but he echoes:

"Never again." He rolls onto his back and tugs Elijah down on top of him. Elijah lets his body blanket Sean's sturdier one and stares seriously at him. At least, it starts that way, but he can't stare long without smiling.

Sean closes his eyes and sighs. Elijah can't catch his breath before he's being hugged as tightly as he's ever wanted to hug Sean, with convulsive, sudden strength. Tears on his cheeks not his own, and he knows instinctively.

"I'm sorry," he manages to say, though his throat is tight.

"You won't leave," Sean whispers, and Elijah knows this is an answer to what he said though it doesn't sound like it.

Elijah lifts his head to look into Sean's eyes, and cups his hands along the sides of Sean's face. Soft hair on his fingertips, the corner of Sean's gorgeous mouth in easy reach of the pad of his thumb. He makes Sean look at him until his eyes clear and focus, and then he deliberately bends his head, eyes open, lips still parted, for a deep certain kiss like years of supercoiled longing. "All you ever had to do was ask," he says.

Sean asks huskily, his thumbs making slow spreads of flame where they caress the sides of Elijah's neck: "Don't ever leave." He turns them again, his weight pressing Elijah into the mattress, and lets his mouth settle over Elijah's again before he has an answer.

"I won't," Elijah gasps, in between shallow, teasing kisses that sting his lips with a sharp persistence like champagne. "I won't."

Sean's knee slides between Elijah's thighs and presses against his erection. Elijah rubs himself against the pressure, rising to meet it, and lets his legs fall apart in silent invitation.

_"Yes,"_ says Sean, shivering a little.

Elijah lies stretched on his stomach, his eyes closed, making the disorientation complete. It is _just_ like a dream--Sean's hands stroking his back soothingly, each kiss on the back of his neck and down the length of his spine giving him another little shock of pleasure. Sean reaches the base of his spine and strokes apart Elijah's trembling thighs to kneel between them. There's movement, a rustle, a brush that he might have imagined, it was so light, on the inside of his thigh.

The whisper of air, and, with no other warning than that, Sean's lips and the hot slick penetration of his _tongue_. Elijah cries out and lifts his hips encouragingly. When the tongue is replaced by oil-slicked fingers he's biting Sean's pillow. When the fingers go he's on fire, lying open and blind on Sean's bed, melting and trembling with arousal. He can't sort out the feeling of his body's weight on the bed; he feels suspended in time.

He opens his mouth to say "Now," but before he does his words are cut off on an open-mouthed gasp. Brief heat and pressure give way to a slow burning glide as Sean goes carefully deep on one breathless stroke, and Elijah's swallowed in starlight. He can't say _"Oh God,"_ so he only whimpers, nearly voicelessly. Fucking incredible, brimming with fiery ecstasy of touch, the tight taut pressure of Sean filling him amazingly--and then satisfaction ebbing, need rising in a tidal wave. But Sean doesn't move, just lies still, breathing gently on the back of Elijah's neck while sweat blossoms all over him and awareness narrows to his swollen cock, trapped against his stomach, and the feel of Sean inside.

Then--Sean's weight lifts a little, as he props himself on his elbows. His hips stir, and the friction sets off tiny chain-reactions of sparks all over Elijah's body. He withdraws deliberately, pauses again, and pushes slowly back in. Elijah can't breathe, can't cry, can't gasp Sean's name. It is exquisite torture. _More._ Again.

Sean seems intent on making love as long as he possibly can. Elijah is incoherent with desire, pleading, before long, and Sean laughs and kisses his hair and gives him three forceful thrusts, each powerful enough that they seem to go deeper than before, and Elijah shouts something, _Sean,_ as he comes, like something breaks and spills him full of wave after wave of pleasure, light and dark and clingingly poignant. It flows from the center of his body, where Sean still takes his pleasure in short emphatic thrusts, and pulses through him down his arms, skipping from his fingertips, evaporating like magic.

 

* * *

_Kiss me twice  
Then once more  
That makes thrice  
Let's make it four_

They've been kissing in the rain for so long, clasping each other in the rain next to Sean's car, that they've almost forgotten about going into the house. When they do, they leave careless shiny footprints in the hall. Sean's shoes start to slip on the wood, and Lij moves to catch him. A sway in the air, and Lij's hand on his chest burning through his shirt. Lij dips his head--Are you okay? hovering on his lips unsaid--and meets Sean's eyes. Wet hair, drips falling in front of his eye to echo the susurration of rain on the windows, his eyes open and frank and slightly vulnerable with a flash of fierce worry. His lips are slightly chapped, pale pink, open around what he didn't say.

And Sean thought he had never seen anything more beautiful than Elijah when he arrived.

He smiles, and doesn't look away. Lij is confused. He smiles back automatically, and starts to drop his gaze, but changes his mind. Sean wouldn't be surprised if Lij vanished when he moved. He doesn't move.

"Tell you what?" Elijah finally whispers, his gaze scattered all over Sean's face, nervous and restless.

Sean sighs and lets Elijah pull back. "We'll get dressed." There are crisp, fresh towels and clothes in the dryer to dress in. Sean lets Elijah go into the guest room to dress alone only because he's confident he'll see him again in a few minutes, if he has to break down the door. Of course, he knows he won't have to.

In fact, it's he who opens his door at a knock, still getting his arms through the sleeves of a rugby shirt. Elijah's wearing what Sean handed him, which happened to include a flannel shirt of Sean's. It dwarfs him, the cuffs hanging loose down around his delicate hands, his neck rising damp and scrubbed pink from the open collar. "Tell you what?" Elijah asks more strongly, meeting Sean's gaze levelly, and he takes a step forward _before_ Sean takes a step back.

Sean just smiles and reaches up. His fingertips push Elijah's messy hair up off his forehead and then follow his hairline down the side of his face--amazing, his square fingertips against the delicate beauty of Elijah's face. "You..." Elijah whispers. His eyes have drifted shut, his lips imploringly open, and he takes in an unsteady breath.

So Sean leans forward to claim the breath, steady the lips with the press of his mouth. "I know why you didn't tell me," he says when he pulls back and Lij is still looking at him in wonder. His turn to breathe deeply, looking for reassurance in the scent of Elijah standing so close. He expected to say this calmly, but he's choking, his eyes misting. "I'm sorry," he says, and

he's in Elijah's arms. "You know," Elijah is murmuring over and over again, his voice breaking, "you know."

"You waited--," Sean explains brokenly, and Elijah kisses him.

"Shhh."

"I'm sorry," says Sean again, against the forgiveness of Lij's kiss.

"No, it's not your fault," he whispers.

They're having two different conversations, by now. Sean's hands under his flannel shirt, measuring the width of Elijah's narrow waist, "--And you're here--"

"--It's not what you did or I did; it happened to us--" Elijah's lips under Sean's ear.

Stumbling steps, eyes closed, mouths meeting with awkward smiles. They reach Sean's bed. "Thank you..."

"Sean," Elijah breathes.

Sean says, "and you're in love with me." Elijah leans over to kiss a tear from his cheek, and lets his lips rest there, bending over Sean on the bed. It's like a blessing, like the kiss of sun or moon or rain.

"It's fucking incredible, isn't it?" He whispers, laughing a little, but his eyes demand nothing less from Sean than the desperate crush of his arms pulling Lij so close they can't meet each other's eyes anymore, rolling them over in a cloud of warm clothes and the smell of laundry detergent and Lij's hair.

"I've been in love with you--so long." The hush of fabric parting as they push it back, toss flannel to the floor.

"I know." A sob's struggling oddly to emerge from his chest, but Elijah kisses him again, so hard it takes his breath away and he forgets--

Sean's shirt has slid up over his head, and he pulls Elijah back into his arms, and they're lying together skin-on-skin. Sean reaches for the blanket and tugs it over them, soft and warm, and Night wraps around protectively. Maybe they are close enough for their eyelashes to tangle in the new wonder of darkness. Maybe they hold still for a long moment while heat washes burning through them. "Come here," Sean mumbles, tangling his fingers in Lij's hair, and pulling his face down--

Then silence.

_I stand alone without beliefs  
The only truth I know is you_

End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics, in order of appearance: "Tear In Your Hand"/Tori Amos; "I Love You"/Sarah McLachlan; "I Wanna Be With You"/Mandy Moore; "It's Late"/Queen; "Here With Me"/Dido; "Somewhere Someday"/NSYNC; "Witness"/Sarah McLachlan; "Tear In Your Hand"/Tori Amos; "Onde Estas"/Nelly Furtado (trans. from Portuguese); "Kathy's Song"/Simon and Garfunkel; "The Right Kind of Wrong"/LeAnn Rimes; "How Long Has This Been Going On"/G &amp; I Gerschwin; "Kathy's Song"/Simon and Garfunkel.


End file.
